THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 7, 1996 TAG: 9607040255
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: 64 lines
Like a lot of folks in Hampton Roads, my wife and I take great pride in caring for our home and the grounds surrounding it. We live in what many would consider an upper middle class section of the city, where like many other communities, children ride their bikes, husbands and wives take evening strolls together and joggers jog and people walk their dogs. It is the latter of this group of individuals that I find myself completely astounded with and the reason for my outrage.
I had just put the finishing touches on mowing my yard and pruning the flower garden, when I noticed two members of the fairer sex walking their pedigreed dogs along the side of my yard, when the animal chose that time to relieve itself, prompting the accompanying owner to lead the dog up onto my lawn to have a proper place to complete its business. Standing not 10 feet away, I was astounded that the owner would ``as a matter of little consequence'' regard my yard as her pet's private toilet facility. When I asked the owner if she had a bag and intended to clean up after her pet, she just looked at me and said, ``Well no, I don't have a bag,'' as if it were her pedigree's unwritten/unstated right to use my lawn as it pleased.
After removing the pedigree's business from my lawn, I was so angry that I asked my wife to put a dog's collar on me and follow that person to her home, because I too had to relieve myself and if that pet owner can on her own accord decree that her pedigree can utilize my lawn as her private facilities, I too should have the same right and use her lawn to relieve myself.
I don't mean to trivalize this continuing and seemingly growing contemptuous attitude on the part of numerous pet owners. Instead, this is a plea to that side in all of us who have been taught to respect the property of their neighbors and in doing so, contribute in some small way to the well intentioned meaning of harmony in these days and times where just doing so seems unattainable.
Mike Trujillo
May 26
Don't spray
With summer's arrival, the City of Virginia Beach will again spray the pesticide malathion across the
lawns, gardens and water supply of its citizens, without warning of the multiple threats to public health posed by this chemical.
Not only is it directly toxic - with effects ranging from allergic reactions and nausea to vision and learning impairment - malathion is also a known carcinogen, mutagen and teratogen. Perhaps city officials should look up these words: malathion causes cancer, genetic damage, and birth defects. The city puts its citizens at needless risk when they are exposed during the massive sprayings.
The city government's official party line is that malathion is necessary for mosquito control; but the city already uses a more targeted method (a tailored bacterial agent) and has no true need for malathion. Government workers will insist that malathion harmlessly ``breaks down,'' but this is a misunderstanding of its chemistry; malathion actually shifts into another form, malaoxon, which is 40 times as toxic as the original compounds.
I cannot understand the unthinking complacency that has allowed the city government to continue exposing its land and people to such a damaging chemical. Malathion may well turn out to be the next DDT: a useful pesticide, long thought harmless to humans - until the mounting decades of evidence overwhelmed the willful blindness.
John M. Aguiar
June 7 by CNB