Planet of the Apes may not be too far off!

[Anonymous Poster]

Patrickg, I wish I were putting you on. But we got trouble right here in river city! Big 'ol satellite truck sitting in front of the court house yesterday. Cynthia Crier is the reporter for CourtTV and is an animal activist, she basically wants the death penalty for the defendant (assuming he's found guilty of course, no bias here).

Our maintenence manger at work was selected as a jurer yesterday so I'm sure I'll here some insights after the trial.
After dropping my kids off at my mom's this morning I saw one of her neighbors walking her dog and sure enough, 3 houses down the block, stop for a poop break in someone else's yard.

On the Planet of The Apes topic, when I was a kid a friend had a 8MM silent version of the original movie. It ran about 20 minutes long, they were the only ones who had air conditioning at that time so we used to hang out in the basement watching it and other movies. His mom would make popcorn and serve pop. Just like a real theater, without the cost of admission.

PibullMidwest

 

[patrickg]

PibullMidwest, I'm sorry, I've let this run a bit too long without fessing up. My feigned disbelief and repetitive "better check with the GlueGuy" comments were an attempt to tweak the GlueGuy's beard a tad in reprisal for his repetitive chant of "its an urban ledgend".
When faced with a 3-5 "love note" per day dog doodoo problem I considered various alternatives (was in SOCAL at time) and passed on the several remedies that required firearms, clubs, fisticuffs with the owners and the like. About half of the time the owner was on one end of the leash. My first adopted and seriously successful strategy was to wire up a cheap ($14) motion detector flood light without the lights. As a load in place of the lights I used a solelnoid valve from a junked dishwasher. To permit operation in daylight I placed the unit in "TEST" mode as this defeats the photocell ckt A N D as a bonus limits the "ON" time to about 10 seconds after cessation of detection (avoided wasting water in drought raveged San Diego). The output of the valve was plumbed to a "RainBird" lawn sprinkler adjusted to not spray the sidewalk but stopped parallel and very close to it.The motion detector was centered on the front of the yard from high up near the eaves of the house looking down such that it could not see traffic on the sidewalk but would detect a dog or person getting off of the sidewalk onto the front of my yard.
This was a raving success for a few weeks. Luckily none of the people who nearly had an arm yanked off of their body when their dog sprinted away, sued me. Idiots probably thought the sprinkler was on a timer. I am not sure I ever hit a dog with water as the hiss of air purging out of the hose as the water came rushing toward the sprinkler scared them off BIG TIME. Dog DOODOO in yard immediately went to zero. Little or no water was wasted, initially. As the offending animal left immediately and the unit cut off within 10 seconds, little or no water actually sprayed out except in my repetitive tests when adjusting the system.
A fringe benefit is that it trained my letter carrier to walk on the sidewalk and not take a shortcut through the yard and behind a hedge and plantings. I never got any feedback from an owner or the letter carrier. Later while chasing an errant ball some neighborhood children discoverd that if they ran back and forth in the yard that the sprinkler woud stay on and spray them so they put on swim suits and went for it. Ordinarily I would have thought this was neat but we could have been fined for letting water run down the gutter (San Diego can get surly/testy about water waste. So I put unit in back yard to keep cats from mistaking my raised vegetable plot for a sand box/comfort station where it worked 100%. Put ultrasonic units up front with 100% effectiveness but not as much fun to watch as the home brew water squirter divice.
Been thinking someting like this water squirter devcie could be useful as a non lethal/injurious anti-personal deterent as regards tresspass in certain limited areas.

Patrick

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Patrick, yeah I knew you were stringin' me along but glueguy wouldn't join the reindeer games.

The trial BTW lasted just 2 days and the jury was out less than an hour. The "puppy kicker" was aquitted because his intent was not to kill the dog, just protect his property. My friend on the jury said the dog's owner was a class "A", government certified, text book example of an @$$hole.

Well, untill the next urban legend pops up....see ya.

 

[cowboydoc]

Boy I'm really glad to see that the guy was acquited. I'm glad there is still some sanity left in the justice system. Last year I finally got tired of telling the guy four miles down the road to keep his dog away from my cows. The dog would come down and chase the cows for hours. Chased him away for months. Owner told me he lived in the country and had no reason to keep his dog home. Well I went out there one day and he had a calf by the tail and wouldn't let go. I grabbed the shotgun and peppered his butt with birdshot. The dog hasn't been back since. Didn't like to do that but not much choice. I thought about this when that guy got into so much trouble for the dog deal that that could happen here.

 

[glennmac]

There is an international organization called The Great Ape Project. It is a limited form of animal rights movement. The idea is that all four "great apes" -- humans, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans -- are so similar genetically, physically, emotionally and intellectually, that they should all be given the three most basic rights: freedom from death, imprisonment and torture. Here is the website:

http://www.greatapeproject.org/

 

[patrickg]

PitBullMidwest, Ah yes... Strange visitor from a distant planet who while disguised as a mild mannered member of ULFA( Urban Ledgend Figters Anonymous) fights the never ending battle against truth, justice, and the American way, but can't be easily baited. Where is he when we need a straight man?

Did you mean to say that in the dictionary beside the word "@$$hole" there was a picture of the puppy owner? I still would have liked to have seen both the owner and kicker get some sensitivity training and community service with abused animals as a deterent to more of this behavior (both sides).

Patrick

 

[patrickg]

GlueGuy, Here is a litle something you might want to add to your extensive "Urban Legends" files.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Under Iowa's current law you must be guilty of 3 statutes (sic?) to be convicted of animal abuse. The jury found the kicker guilty of 2 of the 3. The third was intent. The jury didn't believe his intent was to kill the dog. The law was updated about 3 or 4 years ago after some teens broke into a no kill shelter in Fairfield, tortured and killed a lot of cats.

Is the dog owner's picture in the dictionary? Probably in the next edition. He bragged to co-workers of cleaning his cat's litter box and dumping it on the other guy's car. This went on for FIVE years before the kicking incident.

<font color=blue>sensitivity training and community service with abused animals as a deterent to more of this behavior (both sides).</font color=blue>

Yeah that's the general feeling here in town. But my friend on the jury said the option wasn't available to them.

PitbullMidwest

 

[jimmoore]

Cat tossing in arkansas

Man tosses cat from overpass on I-30 at little Rock.
http://www.msnbc.com/local/kark/m83840.asp

jim

 

[GlueGuy]

Ummm, Patrick, care to explain all that gobbledygook to me? I couldn't make it past the first sentence w/o falling asleep.

The GlueGuy