How Much Poop Could a Pooper-Scooper Scoop if a Pooper-Scooper Could Scoop Poop?

And how big a deal is it, really?

On Wednesday, I broke our pooper-scooper. 

I felt terrible about breaking our pooper-scooper because I'm hardly ever the regular scooper when our little pooper does her thing. So I picked the contraption up for the first time in easily a month - don't worry, we're not that disgusting; my partner, Dave, often takes care of it. It's hard for me to do because of my messed-up arm, but I felt pretty OK that day and, caught outside at the exact moment my Adderall kicked in, I thought I'd do a little yard work.

So of course I broke the damn thing immediately.

Well, the least I could do was to replace it, and right away. I felt pretty confident in my ability to log onto Amazon or Walmart and click a button. But my second nasty surprise of the day was that apparently the pooper-scooper as I knew it is nearly obsolete.

Now the pet-supply companies want to sell you this obnoxious little dustpan-and-rake combo - and it's more expensive, too. What?! Why on earth would this be better? First, it's two objects to keep track of (and to manage not to break). Second, I have no space in my life for the continual de-pooping of rake tines. Third, who wants to empty a dustpan full of poop into one of those teensy, flimsy clean-up bags? 

OK, I don't actually use those: I happen to use our thick, California-issue reusable grocery bags - and Dave just whomps the whole mess straight into the trash. But still! Despite all the five-star ratings each set had, it was nakedly obvious to me that this was an inferior system. I would not settle for anything less than the mess-free, minimally-disgusting, traditional claw-style grabby thing.

The adorable culprit, in her bathroom

I mean, you don't see anything gross at all with the classic pooper-scooper! You don't even come close to it.

So I kept scrolling. I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled some more, and finally, somewhere in the sixth page of results, I found the grabber style. Aha!

And oh, what luck: it was purple! My favorite color. Sure, I cringed a little to think of that gorgeous, violet injection-molded plastic smeared with - well. But the beauty of the classic claw-style pooper-scooper is that the user never actually has to see the scooped poop! It would be transported safely from ground to bag without me even having to look at it.

Ooh: next-day shipping? Sold! And hey, maybe having such a pretty, um, tool around would inspire me to do a little more of this fairly distasteful task. 

Walmart promptly sent me several very earnest emails and push alerts to assure me that the pooper-scooper would arrive at our home the very next day. I had believed them the first time, but they nevertheless bent over backward, begging me to trust that only one day's worth of poop would remain un-scooped.

Having thus thwarted Big Pet Supply to obtain the unpopular, cheaper product I wanted, I was pretty pleased with myself the following day, when the FedEx guy crept up to our front door - his many previous visits having trained him to anticipate the deafening barrage of Jasmine's indignant barking - snapped a quick pic, and beat a hasty retreat over my customary bellows of, “Sorry! Thanks!"

"That's the new pooper-scooper," I said to Dave, unable to keep a distinct boasting smugness out of my voice. "See? I replaced it already. I fixed the problem." 

"Great, sweetheart. Thanks," he said without looking up from the article he was typing.

I felt a little deflated. See, Dave thinks I lose track of things; that I procrastinate. I always mean to figure out why he keeps saying that, but somehow I keep forgetting. At any rate, I realized I'd have to actually use the pooper-scooper to draw any admiration from him over this episode. My heroic display of logging on and clicking a button had somehow not been enough.

So I marched outside, ready to throw the box straight in the recycling bin and get to work. As I unpacked it, though, my stomach lurched.

Where was my adorable purple pooper-scooper? This one was lime green and, worse, it was the exact same model I'd just broken. I scowled resentfully at it. Deceitful little thing! And Walmart had broken its own pitiful promises: a pooper-scooper had been delivered the next day, yes, but not the one I'd ordered. Typical love-bombing bait and switch.

Yes, I was right and Walmart was wrong, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. There was nothing to be done. Poop needed to be scooped, and I was standing outside, holding a pooper-scooper.

So I bent down in the 108° heat of midday and dropped clawful after clawful into my thick gray grocery bag. When I was done, it looked a little better. I realized it would look a lot better if I removed some of the dead leaves and flowers that had fallen from our oleander bushes. So I scooped some more.

They're gorgeous - for, like, three weeks.

When the front of my tank top was soaked with sweat and my arm refused to squeeze the pooper-scooper's handle even one more time, I hauled my bags into the trash - and for good measure, one of them broke and rained filthy sand down the left side of my body. 

Almost, but not quite too exhausted to roll my eyes and let loose a string of obscenities, I dragged myself gingerly into the house. I was beat.

Dave looked up. "Oh! I forgot where you were," he said pleasantly.

Irritation raced to the fore. "I was out cleaning up the yard," I said. "You know. I broke the thing, so I'm finishing what I tried to do the other day. And I got a bunch of the dead leaves out from where she likes to go, too. Two whole trash bags. It actually looks a lot better." I dropped onto the couch and took a huge swing of ice water, utterly depleted.

So that's where I was, I thought.

To my surprise, real concern knitted Dave's brows and he stood up. "Oh, sweetheart. That's not your fault! I would've taken care of that!" he exclaimed. "Here, let me get you some cold brew!" 

I gaped at him. Really? Not my fault? I'd broken the pooper-scooper, hadn't I? Or had it just been left out in the baking heat for too long? It wasn't like it came with a lifetime guarantee. And all my concern about making it right: he "would've taken care of that?" 

But who told me to flip out over a stupid pooper-scooper? It certainly hadn't been him. I made that up and ran with it all on my own.

"Thank you," I said with a sweaty, sand-covered smile. "Cold brew sounds perfect."