I mentioned in The Privatization of Relief that we’re facing a poop problem, specifically a human poop problem. The tourists are pooping on the trails and the street, and in our paradise of free-roaming canines, this is a problem. As the human poop quite literally piles up along our favorite walks, we pondered solutions. If the biggest barrier besides the actual lack of bathrooms was education, how could we convince people to not shit in the woods, or to, at the very least, bury it? While humans are pretty resistant to admitting they’re not some anointed being, when it comes to shitting in the woods, they’ll argue it’s natural. “All animals poop in the woods. Why can’t I?” Because human shit takes a year to biodegrade and it carries bacteria that are harmful to our water supply. Also, it’s gross.
But bacteria aren’t going to make a difference. “Water supply” is too broad a thought. You cannot yell ecosystem! loud enough to be heard over the aftermarket muffler mods added to their Jeeps. They don’t see the harm in revving engines in the trees. They don’t see the point in driving 10 mph to prevent dust. And they seem to believe that when nature calls, nature gets it. The wilds are there to be enjoyed, not to be protected.
In the hunt for a solution to our fecal problem, the easiest option that came up again and again was signage.
Don’t poop here.
One more hour to a bathroom.
Human stool isn’t cool.
But you still see kids run around the pool no matter how many signs say not to. How could a sign convince them when there was no penalty? Without actual ramifications, why would they care about a sign yelling at them to stop? If a tourist shits in the woods, does it really get found?
It does — by our dogs. Sure, some of the poops give themselves away by the heaps of toilet paper accompanying them, but usually their locations are revealed by our dogs telling us they found something incredible. That is, incredibly bad for them. Jibs has had his mouth washed out many times now after coming home liplicking with his tail between his legs.
If water supply and native bacterias couldn’t appeal to passerthroughs without a bathroom pass, could dogs?
A sign has a heavy lift: it simultaneously needs to be brief, noticeable, and it needs to be abundantly clear what it means. For years, motorists and cyclists fought over the “Share the road” signs. Motorists often argued it meant that bicyclists could not piddle paddle pedal in the middle of the lane, slowing down the mighty beasts of capitalism and carnage. Cyclists meanwhile were like, “the sign was literally created so you would stop killing us.” The Share The Road sign was recently removed, actually, from the MUTCD because of this very debate. It failed its goal of clarity, and now, any new installation requires the new sign:
As you saw last week, our town is littered with signs. Most of them say the same thing (slow down), but still, you’re sort of hit over the head with signs. If a sign was going to do the heavy lift of preventing heavy loads, it needed to do more than be brief, noticeable, and clear. It needed to stand out and it needed to make you want to listen to it.
And so I started to design a sign of my own. It needed to cover three basic thoughts:
WHAT: You can’t just poop wherever you want.
WHY: Because our dogs are eating it.
HOW: …
Actually the how was complicated. For now, we’ll presume the How is “Take a WAG bag” though I sincerely doubt most human’s willingness to use one. We’ll get to that later.
So, we have our objectives but for this sign and for signs in general. Let’s get to designing. Here is my first stab at a sign for our precious, verdant, dog-roamed valley:
There are a few problems with this sign, but the first is that the poop is too happy. We could make the poop menacing, like it was out to get the dogs, but that’s borderline too funny. We don’t need people siding with the poop. So let’s make the poop ashamed.
Something’s not quite right. We’re trying to appeal to their emotions with the dog angle, right? With the current sign, they need to get through three sets of copy to even realize this is about dogs. So what about no poop, but a dog?
Now we’re talking. But… we actually encounter the same problem we did before — you don’t know what the sign is really getting at until the third section. Now, it seems like we’re talking about dog poop, which, yeah, great, carry it out. But it’s not the problem we’re addressing. How about this:
The new hierarchy makes it clear that it’s human poop that’s the problem.
Now, we can get into the how. I’m going to put aside for a moment that most of these overlanders do have shovels on or in their vehicles and could be digging holes for their poop. I’m putting it aside because let’s assume those people do shovel holes and the rogue poops are from people who are like, “ah no shovel, guess my very basic brain chemistry will never think to dig a hole with a stick or my hands or a rock or any other item naturally provided. Oh well!” So for them, we cannot say no without providing an alternative.
Enter: WAG bags.
WAG bags are for human relief. It stands for Waste Alleviation and Gelling. The gel neutralizes the smell and solidifies whatever you’ve left in the bag so it’s easy to carry and throw away. While you could, in theory, use a dog poop bag for your shit, I don’t think many people would. (This should highlight why it’s worse to leave human poop in the backcountry than your dog’s — you’ll pick one up without a second thought. The other requires many, many thoughts.)
On our sign, I’ve included “TAKE A WAG BAG” as an incentive for non-shovelers, but that requires locals stocking said WAG bags. And it requires our town purchasing them as well as installing the WAG bag dispenser, which I have never seen and am not sure exists. So now we’re incorporating some innovation that likely relies on the honor system. Then again, this whole thing relies on the honor system. If someone is incentivized to steal a bunch of WAG bags, maybe I want them to?
The other problem with WAG bags, past just asking people to use them, is asking people to take them. How many dog poop bags have you seen abandoned along the trail? Or forgotten by well-meaners promising to “pick them up on the way back”? The only thing worse than piles of shit all over the valley is piles of shit in plastic.
Our final problem with “TAKE A WAG BAG” is that we would need the town to vote on a measure to approve the entire system. And there’s no way they would. Our town enjoys none of the benefits of this tourism. I sincerely doubt they would sponsor these people’s dumps.
So, let’s take a different route. Let’s make burying easier.
Ok, the first problem is that this sign sucks. But let’s tackle the smaller issues first:
“Here’s the scoop” and “here’s how to help” mean the same thing.
By losing Fido, we’ve lost our emotional connection again.
I’m sorry but most Americans don’t know how far 100 feet is. Or how deep six inches is, for that matter. Plenty of people out there calling 4 inches 7, can I get an amen from the ladies, anyway let’s redesign.
Now we’ve got sad dog, HUMAN POOP, and a distance measured by American football and pictures. It’s perfect.
Except it’s a lot of words, none of those words mention you shouldn’t be releasing near water, and it’s a Frenchie. There aren’t any free-roaming Frenchies here now that Cooper’s gone, and he wasn’t an actual Frenchie anyway. Also it’s the only free sad dog I could find on Canva. So it’s not perfect, but it’s not bad either.
Before we moved here, when we lived in Topanga Canyon as it transitioned from a hippie haven of quirky artists to a tech bastion of multimillionaires, there was a poop war on our street. Except that time, it was dog poop. Some people weren’t picking up their poop. We always picked up our poop. It’s great if everyone picks up their dog’s poop, but it isn’t the hill I’ll die on. It was, however, another woman’s hill.
Losing her mind with the dog poop, she started to just walk the streets bagging any poop she could find and then leaving the bags there. She even made a sign, attacking her neighbors. And then someone else made a sign saying she was causing an even worse environmental problem by leaving the bagged poop laying around.
I think of her, now on my own poop crusade. But if her approach was antagonistic chaos, maybe mine can be a bit more helpful. We’re all on this shitter together. Maybe we just need better signage.
Maybe we need better people.
I feel like a sign that says "don't shit here" with a puking dog could also work.