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PHOTO COURTESY INSIDE COSTA RICA
This would be a much bigger story if it wasn’t a holiday weekend, but: A Knoxville, Tenn., company has created a kit and a national data base of doggie swabs so that you can identify and track down the culprits.
The name: What else? Poo Prints.
Some apartment complexes in the U.S. already are requiring swab samples as a condition of residency, with a one-time fee and monthy maintenance charges. The samples are then shipped to BioPet Vet Lab, which catalogs them.
If you find a pile on your property and bag a marble-sized sample before it becomes a coffee table, you can then send it to Tennessee. If there’s a match, you could curb a neighborhood hound’s enthusiasm.
Jerry DeMarco Publisher/Editor
The cost: $29.99 for the swabbing kit, $10 for a vial to hold the samples and $50 to analyze them, a process that takes no more than two weeks.
“It’s kind of like the F.B.I., but on a much smaller scale,” Eric Mayer, director of franchise development for BioPet Vet Lab, told GoUpstate.com, out of California.
But will it actually put Triumph the Comic Insult Dog out of a job? Poo printers seem to think so: They say they’ll have 300 franchises open before the end of the year.
So let’s look at the stats:
There are roughly about 75 million dogs in the U.S. On average, each produces 276 pounds of crap a year – roughly 40 percent of which BPVL says is left behind.
You ready? 8.2 million pounds. That’s even heavier than … (nah. I’m not going there – not today, anyway).
If this idea catches on, it’s only a matter of time before getting a dog license requires a swab. Communities could have actual poop police working the parks. Summonses would be mailed. Those who don’t pony up would have warrants issued for their arrests. People could land in jail. Between the fines and the court costs, government could make a mint.
Then no one would be able to say the poop kit ain’t worth shit.
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