Leftovers
Some people living in my apartment complex, or maybe their friends, have a strange habit of leaving food and associated debris in the parking lot. I don’t mean empty wrappers or fast food bags that might have blown in from elsewhere; I’m talking about half-eaten dinners carefully placed between parking spaces, as if someone had eaten a meal in their parked car, decided they were finished, and set the remaining food on the ground before driving away.
It’s a chore to keep Sam away from the leftovers on our morning walks. None of it is probably inherently poisonous, but he’s probably better off not stuffing himself with people food, especially when the first half of that food was eaten by apparently-crazy people. Nine times out of ten*, when he darts off between two cars, he’s spotted half a hamburger or a milkshake or a box of mostly-eaten chinese food or a run-over dinner roll.
Yesterday morning we saw, I kid you not, a plastic basket—the kind restaurants usually ask you to leave behind—complete with paper lining and what looked like the remnants of chicken fingers and fries. A Starbucks coffee cup stood upright on the cement block at the end of the parking space.
Who DOES that? I mean seriously, is it that hard to throw those last ten fries away? The trash can is less than a hundred feet from any space in that lot. And how would this situation even come up? How often do you find yourself in your car, finishing up a plate of spaghetti? The mind boggles.
I’ve thought sometimes that maybe a homeless person (there was at least one living in the parking garage across the street, until the company put up fences) is eating food in the parking lot but not in a car, or that someone has intentionally left the food out for homeless people. But it’s never the kind or amount of food that would be worth eating**—just the scraps and smears that are left after the good bits are gone. Also, do homeless people drink Starbucks?
I’ve wanted to take a picture each time I see some bizarre food item in the parking lot and start a collection, but I’m only out there when I’m walking Sam, and it’s impossible to get close enough for a photo before he’s gobbled the whole thing up.
The other night John and I came across a neatly cracked egg. The weirdest food of all, though, appeared not in my parking lot, but in another one nearby. Sam ran ahead of me and was sniffing something on the ground intently. Just as he was about to take a huge bite, I saw that it was a baseball-sized clump of raw ground beef. No kidding. It had splattered a little, as though someone had gathered up a handful of ground beef and thrown it from a passing car in the first sally of Beef War 2007.
People are strange.
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* The tenth time it’s a bird. He’s never tasted a live one, but hope springs eternal.
** Sam would like to interject here that he disagrees. He’s thrilled to live near a magical parking lot that grows french fries.
Tags: Sam
March 16th, 2008 at 8:56 am
So the other night I was walking out of Garden Ridge and this guy was in the back of his SUV moving things around (presumably so he can fit in his purchases) when his arm swings out and ‘discretely’ tosses a metal hanger onto the ground. What? Because of his swing it landed between the car next to him and our car. Now quite half eaten food but similarly strange.