It has been a long, long slog of a winter and we are all ready for the white stuff to melt.
An unfortunate side effect of the melt, is the mountains of garbage of all descriptions that are revealed. I am always dismayed at the tons of fast food containers, discarded bags, boxes and miscellaneous debris of all kinds that show up in the ditches, on the streets and in our yards (not to mention all those piles of doggy doo to be encountered beside and upon the cross-country ski trails on Finlayson Island.
And as much as we are longing to say goodbye to the snowdrifts, I am not looking forward to another kind of drift that will replace them. That would be cigarette butt drifts.
I’m not going to go on an anti-smoking tirade. There are plenty of others doing their part in that quarter, putting icky sick lung photos on cigarette packages and militantly banning puffing from anywhere but the darkest and most disreputable alleys.
I blame that militancy, in part, to the proliferation of cigarette butts along every sidewalk, in every gutter and sadly, on my own driveway. The militants take only part of the blame, however, because the major onus for this disgusting development is smokers themselves.
Smokers do not see butts as trash. In their mind a cigarette butt is an innocuous bit of fluff that will biodegrade and return to its organic components almost immediately upon being tossed and ground with a heel.
I have news for them. They are not. I theorize filtered cigarette butts, even after being mined for a few remaining shreds of tobacco but the most desperate of nicotine fiends, have a half-life equivalent to that of plutonium. Essentially, that means they never, never, never disappear.
Here are some observations I’ve made in the past couple days: a co-worker desperately puffing away hasty final drags before entering the building, tosses her butt right in front of the door; a dear friend, whom I am extremely fond of, sees nothing wrong with tossing his butts on my driveway; any area where people are forced to congregate to smoke outside their places of business of work will be equipped with a receptacle for butts, but there will still be a huge pile of them surrounding that container.
I know it is bad form to focus on just one form of garbage, but let’s just say this one put a burr in my butt this week.
Keep puffing if you must, but butt out in the trash!
Comments on: "Burr in my butt" (1)
I remember myself little boy in the spring when the snow melted. I’d discover all sort of interesting items hidden through the winter by the snow. long unseen small toys were the main thrill. There were less interesting object such as articles of clothing or kitchen utensils, well the odd fork or spoon anyway maybe a broom or such.
Now i find dead deer and dead cats. Deer that succumbed to the ravages of starvation, 9 of them last count. Cats that gave up in the cold, not able to face another day of cold dry cat food, or whatever it is that causes cats to die.