DCentric

tramod

He's eyeing you. And he's got a chicken bone in his left paw.

Whoa. TBD blows my mind with this one: “Who’s really responsible for chicken bones on the ground?” As someone with an extra-inquisitive puppy, who lives in a neighborhood where chicken bones litter the sidewalk, I would love to know who is really behind the random bones being flung about…

…one former Capitol Hill resident wishes her neighbors would think before assigning blame for how they got there.

It might sound trivial, but it’s an issue that’s come up at the ground level of local governance of late. Last week, we told you about Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6A’s attempts to get a new 7-11 on H Street NE reclassified as a fast-food establishment. The ANC’s issue with the national convenience store chain stems from, among other things, concerns over their insistence on selling prepared chicken wings. Chicken wings lead to chicken bones being tossed carelessly on the ground, the commissioners have reasoned, which can be dangerous for dogs and attract vermin.

Yes! I live around the corner from a 7-11! No wonder…

But in a message sent back in May to one Capitol Hill neighborhood email list, Carrie Nelson offered an intriguing counter-argument: It may often be squirrels, not people, that are responsible for leaving bones behind in odd places.

Nelson, who owns a yellow Labrador, admits that she had for some time also pointed fingers at her neighbors for this serious threat to her pooch. “It was like, oh my God, who’s throwing their chicken bones on the ground?” she says. Not until just such a bone literally fell out of a tree right in front of her did it occur to her that squirrels might often be to blame.

“I looked up and I saw a squirrel up there,” Nelson says. “Here I am blaming all my neighbors for being complete jerks.”

Okay, this amazing theory no longer works for me. My block has fledgling, squirrel-less trees flanking large buildings, not some lovely, dense canopy where bushy-tailed mammals freely rain unwanted chicken bones down on hapless citizens trudging towards the Columbia Heights metro. So who’s at fault?

Neighborhood debates over chicken bones often carry some uncomfortable subtext, Nelson admits, so she hopes her former neighbors on Capitol Hill (she recently moved to D.C.’s Hillcrest neighborhood) will exercise a bit more understanding.

“There is something sort of underlying it … I don’t know if I’d say it’s racial, but more like, people assuming the worst,” she says.

Ah, yes. Subtext. Sweet, sweet, racially-charged, class-drenched subtext. Q: What kind of person likes chicken wings? A: Almost everyone. Q: What kind of person litters? A: A self-centered, disrespectful one. Last I checked, no group had monopolies on either behavior.

After I adopted my puppy, I was utterly perplexed at how nearby streets were littered with dog-hazards; the first time she merrily picked up a discarded bone outside 7-11 on 14th street and earnestly commenced choking on it, I rushed to remove it while hollering a wholly ineffective, “NOOOOOO!” As I pictured expensive vet bills, a “sympathetic” couple walked by, shook their heads and said, “These people. What can you do?” I was too scared of the gurgling sounds my dog was making to respond.

I just realized something while writing this– I lived even closer to a 7-11 three years ago, and there were no bones there. Interesting. The best thing that can be concluded from all of this is that assumptions are often wrong; not every 7-11 will result in chicken bones being flung around and not every chicken-bone-flinger is…human.