Dog Doo Drama: Resident shocked by doorstep discovery

PHILADELPHIA (WTXF)- A longtime resident of Philadelphia's Bella Vista neighborhood got herself a belated mother's Day gift.

Her reaction?

"That was really nasty," said Arlene Malcontento.

Malcontento (yes, that's her real last name. "It's a long story," she says), is not shy about confronting dog owners who fail to clean up after Fido as they travel past the home she shares with her husband on the 1000 block of Kimball St.

Not long after one of those confrontations--in fact, the morning after mother's Day-- she reached to open her front storm door and saw it: "Dog mess on the top step."

She raced to her security camera recorder and quickly found the culprit: around 9:35 the night before, a man can be seen cleaning up after his dog just up the street. The man uses a baggie to scoop the poop and then walks down the block, dumps the waste on her front step, and keeps walking--looking back briefly to see if he'd been spotted. At the end of the block, he deposits the empty "doggie bag" in a recycling bin.

Arlene's reaction upon seeing the video?

"If I had a gun, she said with tongue in cheek, "I'd have shot him!"

The Malcontentos reported the incident to Philadelphia police, but, since the video does not clearly show the waste dropping from the bag (Arlene has a still photo of the poop on her step taken first thing next morning) there's not much they can do.

For the couple, the big picture is more important than the mess--a lack of consideration for other people's property.

"It's sad, " she says. "And it's stinky."