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Property Managers Use DNA To Sniff Out Dog Poop Offenders
Nerval's Lobster writes "News changes during holidays. It gets thinner and lighter and weirder as the hordes of writers and editors who produce the overwhelming flood of news, updates and infotainments go home to annoy friends and family rather than readers and advertisers. Top points in ridiculousness, however, go to the condo- and apartment-complex managers in Braintree, MA, who were inspired to become amateur zoo-geneticists by resident pet owners who not only refused to clean up after their pets, but challenged the apartment managers to prove it was their pets contributing the increasingly hazardous, unpleasant piles of doggie doo on apartment properties. Rather than put up with a neverending supply of potential EcoBot fuel on marring the landscaping, facilities managers took cheek swabs of all the dogs on the property and sent them to A Knoxville, Tenn. that provided DNA profiles under a program with the dignified name 'PooPrints.' Now, for a fee of only $60 per pooch, residential managers can confirm the provider of a pile of PooPrintable material by comparing the DNA in the dog with the DNA in the pile. 'Now you don't really have to worry about dog poop,' said one fan of the practical application of zoological genetic analysis. 'The grass is now ours again, we don't have to worry about it [poop], and that's a good thing.' Restraint is just as important as innovation, of course, so the building managers made a point of telling the AP reporter who wrote the story that they wouldn't extend the effort to identifying which pooch peed on which bush and when. 'That's a little more difficult. We are not going to tackle that.' Finally, in this holiday season, something to be thankful for." The city of Petah Tikva, Israel started a similar identification program in 2008.
. . . by pooping on the grass yourself. . .
Inconsiderate is what people are... I know dogs can be picky but come on... You bought the thing. You take care of it. Yet you can not control one bit and walk 3 blocks so your dog can take a crap somewhere?
Yesterday while raking my yard I saw a couple who *waited* for at least 10 mins for me to go inside. So they could let their dog piss on my yard eventually they gave up. Thankfully all the dogs in the neighborhood have killed 100x3ft of my grass. I have tried planting more hardy type grasses (so I do not have to water as much). But nothing survives but weeds. Never mind the 3 empty fields nearby. Least most of my neighbors pick the crap up which is about all the credit I can give them.
The normal and civil thing is to pick up after your dog, rather than fouling communal space.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Fucking cats is illegal in most states.
Dog crap is pretty crappy as fertilizers go (depending on their diet). More often than not, it will harm the grass more than help it.
See http://voices.yahoo.com/common-misconceptions-dog-feces-fertilizing-1285581.html?cat=32
Besides, why the heck do you allow animals if you aren't willing to put up with the results of your decision?
The owners are expected not to allow dog poop to remain where it's dropped. They're the ones failing in their responsbility. Unless the managers are DNA matching dogs to poop for their own amusement (we've all done it), I assume they're doing so in order to take action against the owners and force them to live up to their responsbilities as pet owners. That's hardly "putting up with it."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This doesn't strike me as ridiculous at all. It would only be ridiculous if the apartment failed to build the cost of the DNA analysis service into the fines it assigns to offending dog owners.
I wonder how much it would cost to preemptively create a DNA database of all the dogs so you have a ready-to-go database for matching poop when its found. Then they wouldn't have to rely on humans "reporting" the offenders. Just get the poop, have it analyzed, and fine the owner.
I agree it's ridiculous to have to resort to doggy DNA but it's the only thing that finally forced dog owners in my building in Boston to stop letting their pets poop right in front of the building's door. Nobody wants to navigate a minefield of dog poop to get in or out of their home and it's incredibly frustrating and irritating that your fellow residents don't care enough to clean up after their dog.
What's really ridiculous is that Doggy DNA is necessary.
Cats have traditionally played very important roles in pest control --- keeping rodents out of granaries, etc. --- which is how they gained widespread acceptance and favor in human societies. A farm or city with a few semi-domesticated cats around was greatly preferable to swarms of rats. Ancient Egyptian civilization --- the ones who put cats on the level of gods (which status the cats have never forgotten) --- was able to become a powerful empire through large-scale storage and distribution of grain, requiring methods (such as cats) for preventing mass-scale spoilage of food supplies due to vermin infestation.