Sneaky pooper-scooper steals £3,000 inflatable turd
An inflatable dog poo three metres high has been stolen from a market square in Spain.
The £3,000 model of faeces was installed in Torrelodones near Madrid earlier this year, to highlight the town's problem with irresponsible dog owners.
Residents were encouraged to take selfies of themselves next to the poo, with the hashtag #nomascacas, or 'no more poos', and were given a t-shirt in return.
Despite having only 22,000 residents, the town was faced with up to half a ton of excrement a day - about the amount represented by the inflatable.
Now, though, a mysterious pooper-scooper has taken the campaign a little too far.
"A public awareness campaign launched by Torrelodones council in the hope of making residents collect dog excrement has achieved its greatest success, because even the inflatable representing a giant turd has been 'cleaned up'," a council spokesman tells the Local.
"Despite this disappearance we will restart the campaign next week once the company that designed the inflatable provides a new one."
Spain has a particular problem with dog poo, with many owners unwilling to pick up after their pet - and Torrelodones isn't the only town to come up with an imaginative solution.
Three years ago, for example, the Spanish town of Brunete took on volunteers to spot offenders and then chat to them to find the dog's name. Thanks to a national register of pets, they could then find out the person's address - and then deliver the poo, labelled 'lost property', to their home.
According to officials, after just 147 deliveries, the town's streets became 70% cleaner.
Here in the UK, dogs are believed to produce as much as 1,000 tonnes of poo a day. Tactics to keep it in its place have included introducing fines in Daventry for dog owners who don't carry bags.
Meanwhile, Barking Council (no puns please) is looking at using DNA testing to identify careless owners. At the moment, the database only covers dogs whose owners have signed them up voluntarily - making it rather pointless.
However, there's the possibility of making testing compulsory, or at least registering any dogs that have fouled in the past, making it easier to catch repeat offenders.
