Letter to a Litterer

Last week, two days in a row, someone left a package that looked like this at the end of our driveway.

Both days, the package was a plastic bag containing the remains of a lunch at Arby's. Angel went through the bags (that's the kind of person he is, I wouldn't have touched them) and discovered by the receipt that in both cases, the lunch had been purchased mere hours before it ended up at the end our driveway, and that both orders had been paid for with cash. Also, one of the bags contained an empty pill container for a weight-loss drug. Ironic.

We live out on a country road, surrounded by corn fields and pastureland. It's rather frequent that we find beer bottles in our front yard, accompanied by other random trash. Recently, Angel found a can full of tobacco spit.

But this is a little different. Two times on two consecutive days--receiving the gift of a bag of Arby's garbage placed carefully in the exact same corner of our driveway? It feels a little bit intentional, somehow. But I know it's silly to perceive littering as a personal crime.

I am pretty sure that the two Arby's bags are the work of one man (or woman. I don't stereotype. Women can do rude things just as well as men can). I do have to wonder what drives such a person to littering? What is the story behind it? 

Are they trying to hide their Arby's habit from their family? Were they on their way to pick up a first (and second) date, and wanted to leave a good impression by having a clean and garbage-free car? Are they currently struggling so severely with finances that they've had to get rid of their garbage service? Do they not know that when they fill up their car at the gas station, it wouldn't be a crime to throw their bag of fast-food remains into the garbage cans situated prominently between every pair of gas pumps?

Don't litter, folks. Or else a mystified but not entirely cruel world-famous blogger will take a photo of your garbage and lament whatever life situation drove you to commit such an act of property defilement. Next time, feel free to ask us if we have any more appropriate location for you to dispose of your trash.