Not that it hasn't happened before.
Not that I'm keeping score. But I notice these things. Too late in this case, of course, because no one I know likes to get dog shit on their shoes, and no one I know feels neutral about it. Still.
There are worse things. Like that time.
Like that time I stepped behind a tree in a brushy area behind South Sound Mall in Lacey, WA and bled my lizard. And ended up stepping in a pile of soft stuff. Which had the distinctive odor. Of human. Excrement. Human excrement. Which has a smell. Which has a distinct smell. Which you know too well, same as me.
And wiping my foot on the grass, well. No. And washing the sole of my shoe, no either. Nor bleach, nor washing the sole again and bleaching again, no not nothing helped. So those shoes went out. Old anyway. Mostly worn out but they fit well but they had to go out so they did. Because of the smell, which dog shit has too, but one all its own.
And now it's on my shoe. Same foot too — the right.
Yeah, right. Right after my room was cleaned, which happens Saturdays. Right after. I came back and the maid had barely cleared the door, maybe by five minutes and then I walked in with dog shit on my shoe, and didn't notice it until the next morning when it was still soft and still strongly identified itself by smell. If you got close enough to the bottom of the shoe, which I did then, hunting for that thing that was off and it was my shoe which had a wad of dog shit under it, clay-like, hanging tight.
So by this morning it was dry and I held the shoe out the window and dug out the goo the poo with a bolt I found and then I didn't have dog shit on my shoe any more but dog shit residue crumbling off bits at a time across my white tile floor, the stairs, the hallways, and not enough out on the street or along the grass where I deliberately walked deliberately after stepping in what puddles remained of last night's rains.
Not enough because I can still see where the whole wad wedged in, where it clung on, where it hung, where it contaminated my shoe. The outline is still there. Nothing like walking on wet sand for a couple of miles to clean and reinvigorate the sole, and now when I really need it I have none, no sand, no miles of it, not wet either, at all. Just grassy strips here and there dotted with more dog shit and streetside side walks dropped on by dogs who couldn't make it to the grass by the river or who don't care to go there.
Dog shit. No longer the dog's, now mine. Wonderful.
And one day I stepped in some of my own, two days after I left it on the ground, and came back to the same campsite and decided to look for it so I wouldn't step in it and then stepped in it while looking for it. But that was different. No less dismaying, no. Not that. I wasn't really truly sure what that super-viscously dense goo was and checked my shoe by nose and still wasn't sure for a while, but what else could it be? That stuff.
That stuff that looked like shit and was about where I'd left it but smelled of salmon loaf gone very seriously delinquent. In case that's interesting at all, which it isn't, wasn't really because I still had shit on my shoe no matter what and identifying it as shit still meant that it was shit, and it was still on my shoe.
And now it's mine again, this shit that some dog left for me in paradise. And the best plan that I can come up with is the same as always: Do what you can. Only I don't know what that might be.
Maybe I'll just try waiting it out. The maid will be back in five more days. She might know what to do. If anyone.
I wonder how one asks about these things, if at all.