I'll leave it to you to decide whether the title refers to what Ann found on a recent morning beach walk or whether it refers to the morons that left this dangerous mess for others to clean up. Ann writes: Walked the beach this morning ... I was able to remove some items that might have been perceived as food for sea life had it washed back out. Also removed many, many glass shards left in a fire from the night before that would have been more of a hazard for bare feet than any Portuguese Man-of-War. Bob Stover, Executive Editor of Florida Today newspaper, writes a Monday column about this and that, and recently he has focused on litterbugs. In today's column, appropriately entitled Let's keep it clean, he talks about the partnership between Keep Brevard Beautiful, the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, and AT&T Cellular that encourages people to report offenders. Says Bob, You can call 537-6801 or *KBB if you have an AT&T cell phone and report what you saw happen. You merely give the license number, color and make of the vehicle, and time, date and what you witnessed. The owner of the vehicle will receive a letter from Sheriff Jack Parker telling them what occurred.They are also informed that Brevard County has a litter ordinance, which imposes a maximum $500 penalty. (That's probably a lot safer and more effective than honking and making rude gestures at the litterers, which is what I tend to do.)
Along with the photos of the glass shards and aerosol can, Ann sent this picture of a balloon that a sea turtle would likely mistake for a tasty jellyfish. I may be wrong, but I believe Brevard has an ordinance prohibiting the use of balloons outside. My pet peeve? I was raised in the Black Hills of South Dakota - throwing a cigarette butt out the car window up there would get you flogged, at the very least. Down here, drought conditions or not, it seems that nobody bothers to use a car ashtray any more - they don't want to smell up their car, apparently, but feel that it is ok to trash the environment.
There - I feel better getting that off my chest. Let's go pick up some trash!
Be sure to look at the Calendar of Events - there's a lot going on this month. I only listed events for the first couple of weeks. I'll add the rest of April as space allows.
5 comments:
Not only might it still get you flogged, but the ensuing forest fire will get a criminal charge and the need to pay the firefighting costs. However, we are on blizzard #2 this week in the beautiful Black Hills...ski slopes in your old neighborhood expect to have the Easter Bunny on skis this year, I think. Probably very low fire danger at the moment :o}
Caroline
Hi, Caroline - good to hear from you. I check the Rapid Journal web cam http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/pages/deadwood_webcam/ freqently - it was looking pretty good there for a couple of days, but now is pretty yucky - abstractly interesting, but yucky. Be careful on those roads. marge
That is horrible to leave things like that on a beach or anywhere else for that matter.
I'm over in Lee County. After several seasons of drought and dangerous fires consuming homes and posing a thread to motorists on the interstate, I think we are approaching the place where the flogging mentality is going to kick in. When stopped for a light at the intersection of Colonial Blvd and Forum Blvd, you would not believe how many cigarette butts have been tossed onto the median. I hope someone is made an example of, real soon!
Tink *~*~*
I wonder if the people who leave garbage on the beach would like it if I left garbage in the middle of their living room?
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