I was shuffling through multicolored drifts of moist Autumn leaves and thinking about dog crap when all of a sudden a large, gray rabbit popped up in front of me. It hurriedly hopped away and attempted to hide under a dumpster. I didn't even try to catch it. I'd tried that yesterday when there were two of them, and they laughed little rabbity laughs at my attempts. Somebody nearby should have done a better job of securing their hutch.

As for my thoughts of dog crap, I often ponder it when I'm walking near my place, mostly because the parking strip is mined with little brown gobs of it, nicely hidden by the aforementioned Autumn leaves. The parking strip is the last pit stop before their owners drag them over to the nearby dog park. I just know that any dog crap in the park itself is quickly scooped up, mostly because other people are watching. People like to appear to be responsible citizens when fellow citizens are nearby. This reminds me of a woman we saw inside Color Me Mine (a paint-it-yourself ceramics place) yesterday. One of her small children dropped an unpainted ornament, breaking it. She mildly scolded them and was heard shushing them when they talked about it later. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, but was almost certain she was going to sneak out without saying anything. Sure enough, she did. It gave me great pleasure to tattle on her. After all, she'll have to come back to get her ceramic pieces after they've been glazed. I'm not sure if the employees will confront her with the broken merchandise, but I fantasize that they will.

Why do I care? I don't want dog crap on my shoes, and as for the woman, I really hate it when parents do this kind of thing in front of their children. Her kids are well on their way towards learning that personal responsibility is for suckers, and that things only matter if other people see you doing them. I don't want to live in a world populated with people like that. If I had been absolutely certain she hadn't said something about the incident before leaving, I would have confronted her on it then and there. Now I'm wishing I had.

Behind most messed up children are equally messed up parents. It's another one of those self perpetuating cycles.