Dispatches from the Fury Road: Fine.

I was walking along when I accidentally viewed a man’s dog having a poop.

The dog had grasped a smell that was so enticing that it decided to wrench his owner’s arm out of his socket and dragged him from the beaten path over to a big tree. What type of dog was it? I don’t know. One of those dogs with four legs, fur, a snout. You know the type. Not too big. Quite muscular. Has obviously been working out. After a proper and thorough sniff of the base of the tree, the dog decides to leave it’s mark. Unfortunately for the owner, not a little squirt of wee but instead it lays some basic cable. I watch the owner’s shoulders drop and I recognise that body language.

This guy doesn’t have any plastic bags.

Things are about to get worse. Around the corner two policemen on horseback appear. The dog finishes squeezing it all out, and the owner, head swivelling, begins to pull the dog away from the scene of the crime. Busted! The police call out to the man who freezes so still even his dog has to turn around to see what is going on. One policeman begins talking while the other boy in blue issues the fine.

By this time I’m quite close to the action but I can’t hear anything that is going on because I have my noise cancelling headphones on listening to The Smile’s “Bending Hectic”. I can only watch as the man responds, gesticulates, points at the dog, and points at where he’s left his little gift up against the tree. Who knows what happened? Maybe he was so keen to get a walk in for his dog he forgot his plastic bags? Maybe the dog was a poop machine and had gone through all of the stash he had wrapped around his wrist? Maybe this dog is a serial shitter and the man just can’t be arsed cleaning it up anymore?

To be honest, I didn’t really care. As they say, “you do the poo crime, you do the poo time”, or something like that. What I did find fascinating was as the police were handing out the fine for the nugget left by the tree, both horses were defecating all over the path like champions. Let me tell you, it was a real bummer. A crime against my eyes while Thom Yorke was singing beautifully in my little pixie-shaped ears.

For a moment I thought, “Fuck this. I’m going to turn around and give these police a piece of my mind. You can’t be issuing fines to a man who’s dog dropped a log over by a tree. That’s nature. Nobody is going to step in it by accident, unless a daydreaming possum doesn’t pay attention when crawling up the trunk later tonight. If this guy needs to clean up his dog’s job, you need to clean up this mess the horsies made all over the path I am literally walking along. Get off your high horse, get down here with a garbage bag and clean this shit up. You sirs, are a disgrace.”

Then I remembered I like my teeth in my mouth. At this stage of my life, if those burly cops decided to rub my face in it literally and metaphorically, I wouldn’t have the gumption to fight back. Instead, I kept walking, kept listening to the epic song, and returned home to write this. I am more than fine to mind my own business and not stick my nose in anyone else’s shit.

Justin Hamilton

Surry Hills

30th of January, 2024