I was enjoying a lovely little walk at a new to me park. I followed the trail along the river. I admired the posts all decked out in “sweaters” by local clubs. And then I saw it, the most ridiculous of signs.

Signs like these bring out the contrary argumentative side in me because, really?!?

Now I’m assuming that they are intending to say that you may not bring domestic animals into the park and not just informing the populace that there are no domestic animals living in the park at the moment. Maybe it was just a little FYI. In that case- apologies park that shall not be named, carry on, sorry about all this! If however you are indeed excluding domestic animals I go back to: really?!?

You made this lovely park and walk down along the river and no “domestic” animals are allowed. Want to know who goes for walks outside more than anyone I know? People with dogs. People with dogs are mostly good people, and if there is the occasional person without a “doggie bag”, we call what results from that fertilizer. I just can’t understand why you would choose to excluded what would be your largest group of park users.

Because what other domestic animals are you worried about? I mean, I admit I know more than one person who has driven their sheep around in the backseat but that doesn’t mean they let them out at random parks to frolic about before they go home. And downtown, even in a small town, it seems like the amount of horse traffic would be negligible enough not to worry about. So what’s with the sign because no domestic implies that wild animals are acceptable, right?

So, what if I have pet tigers? They are certainly not domestic. If I’m a visiting tiger show person (those people are insane but real and if insane people have tigers they probably take them on tiger walks) it must be okay to bring my tiger down to the waterfront because it’s not even a little bit domesticated.

Speaking of cats. House cats barely count as domesticated either. In fact I’m pretty sure the only reason we call them domestic is because cats want us to take care of them and they tricked us into it.  I’m pretty sure that if I could get one of my cats on a leash without dying of blood loss or decapitation I could argue my way through a cats-aren’t-domestic conversation. It’d be easy because I’d look like I had been attacked by the cute little wild animals they are by the time I got to a park.

Of course if we are just talking wild animals I could coop my dogs up for a day or two and let them loose. I doubt I could argue my way through that conversation though and my dogs would only stay in that little park for 0.34 seconds before they’d be off looking for birds.

Birds though… I think there are some possibilities there. Perhaps a guinea fowl, they are domestic, but weird enough that you’d have to know them to know they are. Or a turkey, there are plenty of domestic turkeys, but raise up a nice little bronze turkey or four I bet you they would be happy to follow you through a nice park and they look close enough to wild turkeys that you could gobble in the face of that silly sign.

I’ve always wanted to take up falconry. That wouldn’t be covered. Nope, no domestic animals here and don’t worry, Mavis here just got rid of some of your rabbit problem for you too. That’d be great, but perhaps a bit more of a time investment than I can commit to at the moment.

But it is on the water… and where there is water there are geese… and I do have a ready supply of cracked corn…

Hmmmm…..

Silly signs like that do bring out the contrary in me.