Chicken City

When we first moved to Woonsocket with our two big dogs they were always finding chicken bones when we walked down the street. We also noticed smashed glass on the sidewalks especially in front of stone walls. Woonsocket is full of stone walls holding up the hills. The smashed bottles and chicken bones were on nearly every street in the city! We imagined that every night people were driving around in their cars, eating chicken, drinking beer, and throwing the leftover bones and bottles out the window.

I know how satisfying it is to smash glass. Years ago, before we had curbside pickup of recyclables, I used to take my empty glass bottles to a recycling center. There was a monster dumpster divided into compartments for brown, green, and clear glass. I looked forward to climbing the ladder and heaving my glass gallon jugs into the dumpster. Smashing glass at the recycling center was a catharsis, especially if you shouted curses while tossing.

But as a dog owner, I don't understand the tossing of bones. Someone used to regularly throw ham bones into my yard. I remember letting my two big dogs into the yard on a Christmas morning. They fought madly over a fresh bone they had found. I raced out in my slippers, nightie, and bathrobe into two feet of snow and tried to break it up, specks of red blood spattering the white snow. I finally discovered who was throwing the bones. I know he meant well, thinking them a gift, but I begged him to stop.