North Atlantic Skyline - - Photographs from the west of Ireland (Galway, Mayo, Clare, Limerick, Roscommon and even Leitrim)

Dastardley & Muttley

The days are getting longer. Spring sunshine casts long shadows across the Clare countryside near Ballyvaughan. Photo taken a few weeks ago.

When I was attending secondary school, one of the few opportunities to encounter ladies (or gurrls as we called them back then) was the hour during lunch. While the girls from the local convent school would stroll about the town in one direction, we counter-revolutionaries from the Christian Brothers would stroll in the other direction, giving as many of them as possible the glad eye. And yes, even then we knew how pathetic we were. However, we were not the only ones wandering about the town. One of my abiding memories was of the packs of dogs that roamed about the place. Just like the characters in a Disney movie, the mutts were forever running about having adventures, befriending urchins, stealing food, developing mange and usually ending their days floating in the canal (OK, maybe more like a Dogma movie). One particular pack of strays used to raid a butchers van every morning. This old guy, who ran a tiny butcher's shop used to bring the meat in every morning in a van. He parked the van just outside the front of the shop, and he would always leave the van doors open while he lugged the meat inside - while he was gone, the dogs would hop in and grab whatever they could. The sight of a little terrier running up the street with a string of sausages in its mouth was not uncommon. We used to call the guy the Doggy Butcher and no, we never shopped there.

Eventually, the County Council appointed a dog warden, who promptly declared jihad against the canine multitude. Within a few years, the council declared that about five thousand dogs had been, ahem, processed by the scheme. The streets were never the same again - they were cleaner for a start. Clare County Council is currently proposing a ban on dogs on all beaches in the county. This guy thinks it's yet another sign of rising fascism in Ireland, but I rather suspect that the good citizens of Clare are just sick of threading in dogpoo when they are at the seaside [if making the trains run on time is a sign of fascism taking hold, then I think we're safe].

Posted by Monasette at February 9, 2004 11:46 PM | TrackBack