In March when my son was two months old and the days weren't as frigid, I would take him and the dog to the park. On this particular day it was chilly enough for mittens and coat. I have big snowboarding mittens that attach to your wrists by a cord so you don't lose them when you need to take them off to get into a pocket on the chairlift.
At the park as always the dog ran around like a maniac and pee'd and poo'd. That's where I come in. When I see him hunched over like an embarrassed gargoyle I pull out the plastic bag and collect the stool and pitch it. Then we played catch and headed home.
When I was loading the troops in the car I started to smell dog crap. I checked my shoes, my hands and the ground around the car. Nothing. It must have floated over from somewhere else. I finished strapping in the boy, put my mittens on and got in the car to leave. When I sat down in the seat the smell of dog shit dramatically intensified. I turned around and cursed the dog for having shat in the car. I stepped out and got the dog out of the car and started looking for the damage. The smell was everywhere but the culprit was nowhere to be found. Not on the floor, the seats, the baby...nothing! I lifted the dog's tail, no danglers. I took off my mittens to use the seat controls to move the seat forward to see if the turd had rolled under. AND THERE IT WAS! Squished under my fingernails, on the back of my hand and the front smeared all over.
When I was picking up the dog's shit one nugget fell unnoticed into my hanging mitten and laid in wait for me to shove my fingers into it. Irate would describe my feeling. Disgusted at my own inattention and the loss of a perfectly good down-filled mitten, I cleaned up as best I could with baby wipes and headed home to trim fingernails.
