Stink Over Manure Just a Case of Rearranging the Stuff

Just when I think Thousand Oaks city officials might be lying down on the job, I learn that they’re still as vigilant as ever. My wife Jenny called it to my attention a few days back.

“Have you seen this morning’s paper where the residents of Dos Vientos housing project have complained to the city about the smell?” she asked.

I remarked that I hadn’t gotten around to it.

“Horse poop!” she said.

Sometimes Jen can be a little short with me.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me,” she said. “City officials have discovered undisposed piles of it on, of all places, a horse ranch called Two Winds.”

“Really? Undisposed piles, you say.”

Somehow discovering piles of horse manure on a horse ranch didn’t seem all that out of place. Now if they had uncovered, say, elephant dung like they did in that museum in Brooklyn it would have seemed more noteworthy. Yep, we don’t get many elephants around Thousand Oaks since Jungleland closed.

I grew up on a farm back East and finding manure lying around in the pasture didn’t rate very high on the excitement chart. I will say that my aunt Esther would get a little tight-jawed and squinty-eyed if any of us tracked the stuff into the house on our boots. But out there in a field? We just figured that’s where the stuff belonged. I mean, where else would we have put it?

OK. In the springtime we’d haul it out of the barn and scatter it over the crops. But that’s not really getting rid of it, is it? It’s more like just rearranging it a little bit.

Granted, manure smells--but that’s sort of a blinding flash of the obvious, isn’t it? Not going to start many arguments there, am I? Nope, it’s like cars and smog. Or lowered pickup trucks and skinny blond kids. They just go together.

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I don’t want to sound peevish, but the Two Winds ranch has been there for 27 years, long before most of the people living in the Dos Vientos housing project likely ever heard of Newbury Park or Thousand Oaks. The people who moved into the Dos Vientos project probably selected it because of the atmosphere, open spaces and quality of life. I assume they knew there was a horse ranch next door--a horse ranch that their development was named after, as Dos Vientos means two winds in Spanish. So now they’re complaining because horse manure smells?

I understand that the operator of the ranch, Alvin “Bully” Caddin, has to vacate the property by December 2000. That’s sad, in a way. I’ll hate to see him go. But maybe that’s what they mean by progress.

We can, however, all take comfort in the fact that the city is planning a new equestrian center nearby that will be shielded from public view. Well, I should hope so! I wouldn’t want to see a bunch of horses walking around spoiling the view of all the new houses being built.

Meanwhile, Mr. Caddin said he doesn’t have the proper equipment to haul the manure off to a composting facility so he’ll load it into rented garbage bins and have a trash-hauling company pick it up.

The trash company will, in turn, sell it to a composting facility . . . which will package it and sell it to a home improvement or garden center . . . which will undoubtedly sell it to some of the residents of Dos Vientos . . . who will pile the smelly stuff into the trunks of their cars, cart it home and scatter it all over their yards.

It’s more like just rearranging it a little bit, isn’t it? But you know what they say: Manure happens.