Dumpster dive

Dear Wally – I have repeatedly caught my sneaky neighbor rummaging around my dumpster, and it is crazy-making to me that someone would think it’s OK to do this without either asking or paying. Ideally both. I can put up signs, but I have done that in the past and it hasn’t worked. Do you have any suggestions that might help them reconsider this rude action? I didn’t buy a community-use dumpster. They also leave a mess!

coon? People (without garbage or pet food) think they are cute. I’m not quite there yet*.

*ever er could. And while I’d like to take credit for the concept, it’s newly across my transom from some creative, funny, and frustrated person out there in LaLaLand. I love the passive-aggressive nature of it. (I guess all that therapy over the years didn’t work …!)

But putting crap you don’t want to own into a dumpster that you don’t actually own or taking crap you want to own out of a dumpster you don’t own is not cool no matter how many feet or paws you have or how righteous your indignation may be.

Dear Wally

Wally Nichols

Wally replies: OK, wait. Are they putting stuff into the dumpster? Or are they taking stuff out? The former is rude, the latter is odd but is also a modern cultural tic. Dumpster diving is a preferred activity of looky-loos, busybodies, the nosey, the bargain hunters, private investigators, or munchers, and gobemouches who buy into the ignis fatuous that one man’s trash shallowly buried in the sepulcher of another man’s dumpster is a carelessly discarded ingot.

And bears. They LOVE a ripe dumpster. And you are sure your neighbor is not a bear? Or an effin’ rac-