Home Owner's Associations want to DNA test your dog's POOP!

I have no words!

Really.  

I just read a friends’ Facebook status update that said his HOA, or Home Owners Association would soon be requiring all dogs living in the neighborhood to submit a DNA sample.  It seems as though Fido will undergo Forensic testing to determine if HE is indeed the one who is pooping in the hood.

Wh What?

Yep, you just read that right.  And so after I snarkily commented that he MUST be making this up I did what every good former journalist would do; I researched this.

Apparently, according to a bazillion and a half Google search returns HOAs across this great country are asking home owners to again fork over some cash for the tests because GAWD knows we have to point our little fingers at someone.  Someone has got to pay for the angst of the rogue excrement.  People must be really frightened of poop.  I fear for this world in which I live.  Poop happens.  Poop is natural.  Yes, we should pick it up but seriously, a freakin’ DNA test sent to a crime lab to see if it matches?

Don’t worry, the homeowner will be footing the bill for the lab results.

Now hons, I do not have enough time in THIS particular blog to go into detail the horrors of living within an HOA so I won’t.  But do you really want to live in a world that is more concerned about wagging their finger at a neighbor about dog poop?  Do you want to live in a world where people are far more concerned over this than the state of our national security?  Oh, yes, the borders are wide open but we got to the bottom of whose dog is pooping and not picking it up!  We know!  We have been empowered with the poopy poopy TRUTH and the truth, well it stinks. Literally!

Truth is, folks, this is happening more places than one.  Take for instance a California HOA who writes to a Condo attorney and asks about their rights to demand doggie DNA to investigate POOP.  *Sigh*, yes, I know, California but the question is as follows:

“Hello, can our HOA board based in California enact a legal mandate to have all Dog Owners submit their Dog’s DNA to create a database to match owners’ dogs to the feces left behind on the communities property?  A simple swipe of the dog’s inner cheek collects the DNA and if a match occurs for the offender, a fine will be imposed.  Seems harmless and an effective deterrent.  Is it legal and can the bylaws be changed to correct this irresponsible behavior that’s unsightly plus the health concerns for the bacteria each feces contains?” (Grimm, Beth, Checking Your Dog’s DNA-Is It in Your Future? Taken from http://condolawguru.com/2012/09/dog-dna-is-it-in-your-future/)

It doesn’t stop at the left coast.  Here’s another instance of POOP police gone bad in Virginia.  I thought the south would have some sense but Nooooooooooooooooo.  Check out the article for yourself, right here. http://www.belch.com/blog/2013/06/13/hoa-in-virginia-to-dna-test-dogs-to-match-poop/

Texas drives friendly but apparently doesn’t feel too friendly about people not picking up their dog’s doodie.  Here’s that example: http://www.khou.com/story/news/2014/07/21/11828928/

I would love to say that I searched and searched to find these stories but I didn’t.  I found them easily and many of them. 

As sad as it is I have to say I’m disgusted that we’ve come to this as a society.  Instead of helping each other out or being a good neighbor, we have now come to crime lab testing our dog’s crap so we can assign blame to the proper person.

Yes, people who walk their dogs in neighborhood common areas should pick up the poop but I think it’s out of this world NUTS that HOAs will require your dog’s doodie to be tested now. I think lawyers are behind this.  I think Pelosi might be too.  I just think it’s sad that we no longer can settle disputes or help each other out and that we’ve resorted to a society that wants to DNA test a dog’s POOP!

 

Poop happens people.  I think all y’all in those ignorant, uppity, unctuous, pretentious HOAs (all y’all is plural for those of you not reared in the south) need a good butt whoopin’.  All of that energy spent on CSI-Community $H!T investigations is wasted on that….uh, waste.

Poop happens.

I bought my daughter a book when she was little with that very title.  Look it up.  It’s a real page turner…at least it was for a four year old.

I hope you’re as disgusted as I was with this new HOA demand!
I think it’s a little……(rhymes with witty) that people have to treat each other like this.

#ThankfultoNOTliveinanHOA

~Anne Boswell Taylor, patriot poopie picker upper and advocate for freedom from HOA oppression

               

Goodbye my little friend!

This morning I woke up with a vengeance!

 

There’s blood out there and it will be MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (evil laugh here)

There are mice in our walls.

 It’s no surprise really.  I mean, we bought an 1890’s farmhouse in rural SE Colorado and it backs up to Mighty Mouse’s Golden Corral buffet, a farmer’s beautiful almost harvest ready corn field.  Well, DUHHHHHH you say to me about mice in our walls.  “You silly city girl, you,” you utter under your breath at me.  It’s OK, really.

Adding insult to injury I noticed the FIRST evidence of this yesterday as I was cleaning Mr. Lazy and Mr. Belligerent’s litter boxes.  Those two useless felines are actually allowing the mice to use their elimination facility.  Yes, there were mouse droppings in the box!  Oh, no, don’t mind me; I don’t mind cleaning up the box while you two furry beasts lie around sanctimoniously licking your rear ends.

Now, being as this is the first pest out here in the wilds of Bent County that I can’t fill full of lead, however, don’t think I don’t want to.  I need a solution and I need one fast.  Who knows what Mickey and his free-loading mouse buddies are doing to the interior of my walls.  I heard that frat party they were hosting last night.  I think it was any-coin-buys-an-electrical-wire blow out par-tay!  The holier-than-thou cats were ignoring this.  What?  What noise in the wall?  We only hear the clank of the food being poured into the bowl.  That’s what happens when you start allowing the “Medicinal Catnip” to be freely dispensed; the crumbling of a productive, hunting feline society.

I think I understand Bill Murray’s character in Caddy Shack with the gopher issue.   

It started to drive him crazy.  When I Google searched this information, I started to lose my marbles too with fret:

The gestation period is about 19–21 days, and they give birth to a litter of 3–14 young (average six to eight). One female can have 5 to 10 litters per year, so the mouse population can increase very quickly.

Holy crap!

Let’s all do our old-school, NON-Common Core math for a second.  Let’s assume Miss Mouse is having about 11 babies per birthing event.  Hmmm 11x, let’s just all it about 8 litters per year.  Ok, so 11x8=88 in a year’s time.  Let’s assume that half of those are females who get bred soon thereafter.  44x88=3,872

That is more than the entire population of Las Animas in a year’s time, in the walls of our home.  I am moving to militant mouse removal strategies.  

I’ve called upon my like-minded FB friends in rural areas and so far have learned that peppermint oil soaked cotton balls will work to chase them away.  I’ve learned from many on line videos from Bob Villa, the original OLD house guy, that I need to seal cracks around the house and hang plastic owls in the trees along with a ribbon like material that looks like a snake to a mouse.  Yes, prevention is good.  I’m concerned about the ones who are already IN the house.  

 I expressed my worry to the cats.  They’re indifferent to my concerns. 

See?  Do you see any interest in anything other than a nap?

I’m thinking I should go and busy myself with something else because my energy to capture the enemy is consuming me and only makes me want to watch Caddy Shack again.

Here’s the famous dynamite clip that I cannot do in my rodent irradiation as much as I’d like to.  Carry on!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0Hx5ka1FiA

~Anne Boswell Taylor
#MouseHasToDie
 

Dead to sin

 I wanted to share this with you.  Yes, it's not the usual blog, a video blog I guess so to speak.  I hope you enjoy it!

Re-runs are GREAT because the older you get you forget you've already seen it.....

Or read it.

You know what else is great!!??  

Doughnuts!

So back by demand, once published in the Colorado Common Sense News publication (April 2014):
I give you this!
Enjoy!

Be still my heart!  

There it was sitting there, glistening with a sweet glaze of maple sugar icing.  It appeared warm and gooey; the apple fritter is perhaps the most perfect doughnut ever.  I snatched up one of those little tissues to grab the last one.  It was mine!

Where I come from, doughnuts, politics, and corner coffee shops filled with retired Veterans and septuagenarian cattle ranchers go together.  Enjoying a doughnut or two or perhaps three was never a bad thing, it was a celebration.  To pull up a chair in a local coffee shop and order a sweet southern treat was simply an act of true community.  After all, this is where everyone catches up on life over our favorite breakfast treats, doughnuts.  

As I enjoyed my selection of a cinnamon coated doughnut today from the front seat of my Honda, I earned a few stares and glares.  An obviously fitness-minded young mother decked out in her possibly daily ensemble of yoga pants and an expensive looking fitness type top hurried her daughter past my vehicle as if I was selling crack wearing my gray hoodie giving furtive glances.  It then dawned on me that in Colorado now it’s more acceptable to smoke pot than eat doughnuts.  This attitude has to be the reason Krispy Kreme in Colorado Springs closed.  It’s scandalous to indulge oneself in a warm, wonderful doughnut! 

The doughnut actually has a rich history, pardon the pun, in the United States but we didn’t invent the doughnut.  According to fabulous food blogger, Tori Avey, editor and curator of The History Kitchen, the doughnut came to us originally from Ancient Rome and Greece but it was the Pilgrims and Dutch Settlers  who brought the scrumptious goody to the United States. They didn’t always have a hole in the middle.  It was found that the dough wouldn’t fry evenly enough to not be doughy and un-cooked in the center while the outside was perfect.  It’s been a work in progress for hundreds of years.

Other history surrounding the doughnut dates back to the First World War.  Avey mentions in her blog that in the book Glazed America, by Paul Mullins, doughnuts would be handed out to the troops.  The morale building treat continued into World War II. The girls who handed them out were called “Doughnut Dollies.”  This is probably a book you might want to pick up if you love Doughnuts and America, and many of us do!

The deep fried dough has roots in Jewish culture too.   The treat is enjoyed at Hanukkah and is refered to as sufganiyot or bimuelos.  And that machine that mass produces doughnuts was invented by a Jewish refugee named Adolf Levitt.  Ahhh, thank you Mr. Levitt for the automated doughnut machine for we are grateful.  Think about that the next time you’re watching the warm, glazed doughnuts roll past you at a Krispy Kreme, should you have the chance to find one next time you’re traveling in the south.

So I bring this up because at first I thought it odd that the doughnut has become a forbidden treat, it’s almost kind of naughty.  Well, that’s the feeling I got anyway as Fitness Frannie ,  I told you about her earlier,  passed me with a surprised look on her face.  Yes, I’m enjoying a doughnut!  Get over it.  

Finally, America loves to name a day for everyone so in case you’re wondering National Doughnut Day is officially June 3^rd.  That gives you time to jump on the trails and exercise yourself silly so you can have one.  Or not!  That’s the freedom we have in America.  We have the freedom to eat doughnuts! Oh you’ll still get the ‘looks’ alright but just look at them and explain that you’re being patriotic and shame them into putting down that tofu, egg white gluten free organic breakfast burrito.  

~Anne Boswell Taylor, apple fritter lover first, then maple bars, then original glazed, then....whatever is left! ;) #MmmDoughnuts
#DoughnutLove
#Doughnuts