Trashing Florida
To the Editors,
OK Durango, if you just invested $17 million in a new house, how quickly would you trash it?

 

Since the Florida Road improvements were completed, my husband and I have devoted at least two nights per week to picking up trash, weeds and other assorted detritus along a stretch of this beautiful new roadway. We’ve found the usual: beer cans, bottles, fast food restaurant bags, etc. We’ve pulled up Siberian elms trying to retake the stretch of road, along with bindweed and various other sorts of undesirable vegetation.  

 

But the biggest trash we find? Cigarette butts. Really? Come on ... Now to add insult to injury, as we were picking up earlier this week, someone actually had the gall to pitch a hot cigarette butt out the window where we were cleaning up the roadway, leaving my husband with a burn, appropriately perhaps, on his middle finger. If the driver who did so returns, he’ll gladly show it to him. You know who you are.

 

Can’t we take better care of a $17 million investment? Can’t we be more proud and responsible for this investment ... or must we cut down the trees, rip out the street signs, vandalize the fencing, ad nauseum? Come on, let’s put up some cameras and catch the culprits intent on diminishing our investment. Or, we could just all take a small bit of responsibility and preserve this major improvement to our community. Really, you can do it. Find your ashtray in your car, keep your trash for when you get home, clean up after your dog. It’s not too much to ask.   

 

Oh yeah, for those who dislike the roundabout and the 3rd and 15th medians ... slow down and you’ll figure it out. These areas are much safer than before.
– Carol Diver, Durango

Throwing stones
Dear Editors,
I would like to offer some advice to those who have recently submitted comments about aggressive sheepdogs. Most of these dogs are large, formidable Pyrenees cross animals that are raised as working dogs with 4
little socialization other than that provided by shepherds. They are absolutely amazing to watch when they are moving or securing a herd, but they consider people passing close to the herds to be some sort of a threat. They are particularly hostile to people with dogs of their own.  

 

I have hiked thousands of high country miles and have encountered these aggressive dogs on numerous occasions. I happen to speak bad Spanish fairly well and have had occasion to have long conversations with shepherds, most of whom come from South America on temporary seasonal visas. Some years back while hiking The Colorado Trail, I was harassed by a sheepdog during one of those conversations and the shepherd picked up a rock to clobber the offending dog. He never had a chance to throw it – when the dog saw him pick it up, it ran as fast as possible in the opposite direction. I subsequently learned that throwing rocks is a common method employed by shepherds in training these dogs.  Since that time, I have encountered aggressive sheepdogs on many occasions and I simply pick up a rock.  They always back off.  
To think that these dogs should or ever would be trained to socialize with passing humans is laughable. Just pick up a rock and be on your way… .
– Best wishes, Jerry Brown, Continental Divide Trail Alliance, Durango

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