A homemade pooper-scooper
Our family now has a dog. His name is Bleu. Well, his name was originally Blue, but he does not know that. And he is even less likely to know that his full, birth name, was Bluebeard The Pirate. In the end, dogs, like humans know very little about what goes on around them. I best get to the point before I lose you. This dog poops. You say--all dogs poop. Really? I have not had a dog before so until this point, that was only speculation on my part. But indeed, Bleu poops. With poop place prominently on my front lawn I have the issue of one of my sons stepping in it, and I have four sons so the chances are pretty high. I keep a shovel outside, against the fence just for this purpose. Bleu poops, I scoop and bury. Leaving it for later only invites the possibility of steppage. The problem with the shovel--what's that? You say, How could there be a problem? You say, The shovel removes the poop? Yes, the shovel does. You are correct. I am sorry. How silly of me. Let me start again. The unintended problem with the shovel for removing poop is that it also removes lawn. It is actually quite hard to get underneath several recently left deposits. They do not cooperate. You scoop one, but the friends are left there, laughing. What's worse is when you go in for second collection, to get the offenders, the first guy jumps off. Very quickly you learn that you cannot wrangle them all unless you have a plan. And your plan would likely be the same as mine. You surprise them and go for the unexpected "underneath" capture where you place the shovel in front, standoff fashion, wait and then attack, scooping quickly by force, going underneath, leaving them on top. By the time they figure out what happened and the curse Newton's second law, you are on the way to bury them. You don't see the problem? Again, silly of me. To pull this maneuver, you must go low, often taking some lawn with you, or at the very least, doing some sort of scalp and release program. It became clear that I wanted one of those devices with the paddle and containment units. The ones where you march the poop along, rolling, into a tray and then carry that to the disposal center. This leaves the lawn untouched. At least u touched by you. I saw this device for sale at a local store. There were two sizes. Really? Two sizes. I would love to hear the thoughtful conversation that would accompany going Family Size. It might be something like this. Wife: look there are two sizes of scoopers. Husband: what? Wife: yes, look here. It is the same system, but this Family Sized one is half again as large. Why? Husband: you know, I would not have to empty that sucker out for days. I was in the market for the normal sized one. It appeared sturdy enough, but was made out of plastic. I do not like buying any more plastic than I need too. It has nothing to do with the environment. I just do not like the feel of plastic and it usually breaks. I looked around for a metal and wood one. And that's when I realized I could make one. Who cares if what I use to scoop poop was not an officially branded product. I thought of the various things I keep in my garage for just such a creation. I have a goodly amount of random, but useful, stuff in my garage which is odd if you know me. I do not like clutter and I like to expunge my house of unnecessary things. I lived without a popcorn popper because I figured I could use a pot and not have one more item in my cupboard. Father left a popcorn popper in my basement last time he was here, claiming father rights because he should not have to suffer to have popcorn. What kind of son was I? In my garage, I have the handles of broken yard tools, knowing that I could use them in some way. A few are currently in our chicken coop. So I had the two handles solved with a quick grab in the corner of the garage. The paddle came easily as well. It is the bottom of a drawer that once resided on the Nike campus. I no longer have the drawer cabinet, but kept the useable wood and hardware. The poop receptacle of my recycled contraption is where I think the brilliance lies: it is an olive oil container. I kept it, thinking I would turn it into a chicken feed, feeder, but found a better option for the chickens. The olive oil container was given to me, by my sister and then, not, brother-in-law. It was even unopened and full. Score. Given the box shape of the container, it made a perfect receptacle. It is strong, having its own structural rigidity so all I had to do was cut, fold over edges twice, and screw the sucker to a pole. Done and ready for business when Bleu does his business. I have not used it yet, but it is outside, along the fence, waiting for when I let Bleu out in the morning. I think I should brand the idea. I would call it "Waste Not" and enjoy a little chuckle with the double meaning. So there you have it--collected waste used for collecting waste. I like to think that my execution of the idea was not crappy.