What On Earth Day

Do you remember Woodsy Owl? Totally another flashback to "back in the day."

Woodsy Owl is an icon for the United States Forest Service most famous for the motto "Give a hoot — don't pollute!" His current motto is "Lend a hand — care for the land!" Apparently, Woodsy's target audience is children 5 to 8 years of age, and he was designed to be seen as a mentor to children, providing them with information and advice to help them appreciate nature.

I wish people of all ages would listen to his message.

To observe Earth Day today, my neighbor Cindy and I took a walk after work to get exercise and pick up trash along our route. We both wore gloves and brought plastic bags, thinking we'd never fill them. We followed Deer Road to 64th Street to Townline Road. We didn't even make it a half mile on Townline and our bags were basically full. And we still had the trip back on the other side of the road.

What did we find? Well, typical of the "spring thaw reveal" there were plenty of cigarette boxes and empty plastic bottles. I also stumbled upon a dirty diaper early on that started to stink later. We found a pair of underwear, too, and the normal mix of fast food wrappers and other trash in between.

We wanted to give the litter bugs the benefit of the doubt, like maybe it blew off their garbage on the way to the dump. But most people get their garbage picked up at their homes. And it had the appearance of being thrown out windows, according to us Woodsy wannabes. Just don't understand that level of disrespect for Mother Earth.

Our bags were filled to the max. Thank goodness we wore gloves. Yuck. Glad we could do our part for Earth Day. We encourage you to do the same.

The sad thing is that I went into town not 15 minutes after we got back and I noticed already that someone had littered along our route. Are you kidding me?

Sigh...

We don't necessarily need to leave a better planet for our children. Maybe we need to leave better children (and adults) for our planet!

Please give a hoot!