An anti-litter vigilante got payback last week on the transient types who defile beautiful
places with their trash.
My friend Bill, last name and location protected to protect the guilty (him), is fed up with people who toss their cigarette butts and other trash at parks, lakes, streams and anyplace else they might frequent.
Like many, Bill keeps a trash bag with him all the time. He picks up trash up along roads and, at one highway, even has his name on a sign, saying that he's the litter sheriff of the interstate.
Bill's angst was unleashed again this year transients who camp illegally at a beautiful swimming hole in a national forest, and, in the process, have trashed the hell out of it. A large group of volunteers cleaned it, six truckloads of trash in all.
That solves only half the problem, Bill noted. You have to do something about the people who are causing the problem in the first place. For those who work on cleanup crews, these people are like wasps. If you don't do something about the wasp, it will keep stinging you.
Many readers have sent in suggestions on how to fix this: require everybody to carry a trash bag anywhere on public lands — that is, no trash bag, you get a ticket; ban the use of filters in cigarettes (leftover tobacco quickly breaks down); to get more arrests, cite littering as it occurs (rather than waiting for litterers to leave the site) and prosecute them with a $1,000 fine; create a law that bans those found guilty of littering from public recreation lands.
For Bill, there came a recent morning at his home when he smelled an awful smell. With a flashlight, he peered under the deck and saw a family of baby skunks had been born.
After some research, Bill trapped the skunks, seven in all, in live traps (built so the skunks can't raise their tails and let loose). Bill then transported the little fellows to the site where the transients camp illegally.
Those little skunks have found a new home this summer, and, along the way, perhaps many deserving victims.
Tom Stienstra is The San Francisco Chronicle's outdoors writer. Email: tstienstra@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @StienstraTom
From: The San Francisco Chronicle
