"Good mornin! How ya doin'?" The vigorous shout startled Our Heroine. She had been deeply absorbed in her morning routine of rotating an organic mulcher that she made from an orange barrel the Highway Department had wastefully thrown away. After educating the department head on 37 uses for the barrels, she had rescued a dozen or so and given them a new home, a new life and a second chance.
Our Heroine spun around and saw her next-door neighbor, Sandeep/Bob lugging several garbage bags to the end of his driveway for pickup.
"The litter investigator is well, thank you", she replied. Her eyes narrowed for a moment.
"No recyclables in those bags, right, Sandeep/Bob?" Sandeep/Bob gave her a good natured thumbs up sign. OH sighed. Trust was hard work.
"Off to work. Have a good 'un!" her neighbor yelled as he jumped into his car.
Sandeep/Bob's employer was contracted with Bengali Trust Funds, an Indian investment firm who outsourced their customer service calls to the US. For their clients' convenience, employees adopted Indian names, and some employees found it easier to go by both names than to try and remember which name to use at a given time. It was not uncommon around town to hear things like, "There's a library trustees' meeting Wednesday night, Sheila/Vineeta" and "Did you hear about the ten point buck Rajeev/Freddy shot?"
Our Heroine allowed herself a few more moments to ponder the miracle of decomposition before she left for the police station. A recent breakthrough had renewed OH's enthusiasm for her work as litter investigator, and as she rolled to the police station she hummed a little song of her own: "Oxygen, nitrogen, bacteria, it's such a lovely mix. Oxygen, nitrogen, bacteria, in the soil fixed."
The past two weeks had been filled with tedious labor as OH searched for a lead in the case of the Kool Cigarette Pack and Budweiser Can Dumper. Litter collectors throughout town had been finding these two items together for over a year, and public outrage was intense. The citizens had spoken. They said, "Enough!", and OH was determined to give them what they wanted; namely, to fine Perpetrator #1 $3,500. After placing hidden video cameras along numerous roadsides, OH waited. And she watched a whole lot of footage.
Some of the footage was quite good, such as when a camera was carried off by a bear or other animal, and OH was privy to the secret lives of woodland creatures. However, those videos were the exception. Most of the 960 hours of film was extremely dull or downright demoralizing, such as footage of truckers relieving themselves. But at long last, it appeared that Perpetrator #1's license plate had been caught on tape.
The officer on duty at the police station had just emerged from the bathroom, coffee in hand, as Our Heroine appeared at the door. He sat at his desk and seemed not to hear OH's salutations.
"Please excuse me, dear Aunt Sally." OH frowned. "Now where did that come from? What I meant to say was, 'EXCUSE ME, OFFICER!!!" OH bent very close to the man's ear and screamed this at the height of her vocal capacity. The officer jumped as if his bottom had been torched, his mouthful of coffee spewing across the papers on his desk.
"Hell's bells!" he gasped, staring at OH with horror, "What are you trying to do? You're lucky I didn't draw my gun on you!" His face turned from white to fuchsia.
"Whoo-eee" OH muttered not quite under her breath, "A little jumpy aren't we, El Cap-i-tan?" The officer's hand twitched slightly toward his holster, as if the possibility of using a firearm was not out of the question.
"How can I help you?" OH thought that the man sounded strained, as if his work was causing a great deal of stress. OH could certainly relate. It was a common problem in the law enforcement sector. She smiled very kindly at him and spoke in the gentlest tone possible: "I'll need you to run these plates for me. The owner may be the most wanted litterbug in America".
OH peered over the officer's shoulder as he typed the number into the computer. "Bouvier des Flandres. What the blue heck kind of name is that?"
"Flemish" he replied.
"Ewww. Any prior convictions? The litter investigator would like a full report." The officer decided that OH would leave sooner if he gave her what she wanted.
"Thank you", she said, "The litter investigator is pleased." She took the policeman's seat and began to read.
In a bizarre series of events, Bouvier des Flandres had mistaken his large, hairy dog for a bear and had taken a pot shot at it. Oddly enough, des Flandres was charged with possession of marijuana and PETA filed suit against him for animal cruelty. des Flandres claimed that he used marijuana for medicinal and religious purposes (he belonged to the Sacred Order of the Rutting Moose) and was given a light sentence of community service. The animal cruelty charge was dismissed when the judge ruled that the man's dog could not testify because the only animal interpreter in the US was employed by PETA. The report ended with a final, fatalistic twist: for community service he had collected litter.
As she read the last sentence, the thought crossed OH's mind that perhaps the system creates the criminal, but before the implications of this idea could sink in, the station phone rang.
"I'll get it!" she cried. She snatched the receiver just as the policeman was saying, "But that's the 911 line."
"My friend's bleeding all over", said an anxious young male voice.
"Excuse me?"
"Is this 911?", he asked.
OH looked down at the phone. "911" was printed in huge black letters across the surface and the phone itself was neon yellow. She sighed.
"Wang blang, yes, it is. What can I do for you?"
"What! Don't you don't know what to do?!"
"Now hold your camels, Bucky, it's going to be alright."
"OK, well, he needs an ambulance and should I like, do something until they get here? I mean, if he stops breathing or something, should I do CPR?"
"Sure, but don't tell him about it when he wakes up."
"Uh, yeah. What else should I do?"
"First why don't you tell me what happened."
"It's kind of a long story."
"That's alright, I've got plenty of time", OH said kindly.
"Well, see, my friend went down a ski slope in a grocery cart."
"What?!" OH hollered.
"My friend went down a--"
"I heard you! What in tar-nation were you thinking?"
"It seemed like a good idea and we saw it in a movie..."
"Oh, that's it. You're on your own from here on out, bucko. Anyone who imitates movie stunts deserves a lesson in safety."
"Wait! You can't--"
"And don't litter!" she shouted. Our Heroine turned to the utterly dumbfounded police officer and shook her head.
"Every good boy deserves fudge, but he was not a good boy."
