Posted on Tue, Jan. 07, 2003
John Grogan | A caretaker for every dirty need
By John Grogan
Inquirer Columnist

It's a beautiful morning - freezing rain turning to slush underfoot - as I begin my first official tour of the Main Line. My guide for the day is a woman who calls herself Miss Poop.

What better way to get to know the neighborhood, I figure, than with someone who has the real dirt - the one who picks up the dog droppings.

Our first stop is an elegant house on a wooded hill overlooking Valley Forge National Historical Park. It has a four-car garage and enough square footage to hold the entire Mummers Parade. Miss Poop swings open the gate. The backyard is a mess. The culprits: four large dogs, including a pair of horse-size Great Danes.

Armed with a steel rake, dustpan-like scoop and plastic shopping bags ("Target's are my favorite"), she patrols the lot in a meticulous grid pattern, leaving no turd unturned.

Without warning, the owner - an executive in bedroom slippers - lets out the four dogs, which jump all over Miss Poop in the mud. Obviously, you need to really love dogs to do this job. Fifteen minutes later, she has five bags filled and neatly knotted.

Miss Poop, also known as Miriam Hughes, a 51-year-old college graduate and trained medical illustrator from Valley Forge, is an entrepreneur. She saw a need - well-heeled suburbanites who love dogs but hate cleaning up after them. And so a year ago, she launched her service under the motto, "You deliver, we pick up!"

Ultimate indulgence

Neither rain nor sleet nor snow can stop the Main Line's poop lady, as I found out on our recent soggy morning together as we sloshed from Wayne to Villanova to Devon, creating duty-free zones as we went.

For $15 a week, she, like a handful of other pooper-scooper services around Greater Philadelphia, takes the dirty work out of pet ownership.

Call it the ultimate indulgence for the pampered class. For a price, every unpleasantness can be farmed out to an eager member of the service economy. There are people to clean our sinks, wash our socks, clip our toenails, diaper our babies, cater our parties. And now, to even follow Fido around, shovel in hand.

Is this a great country or what?

Miss Poop insists that some of her clients are average folks just like her, but on this morning, the homes we visit are in their own stratosphere.

The second house we stop at opens directly onto the grounds of the national park. This one's a cakewalk. The two dogs that live here "only ever go in one spot," Miss Poop explains as she makes quick work of the job.

In Villanova, we stop at a large Tudor with tennis courts, formal gardens and a Mercedes-Benz and Range Rover in the driveway. In Devon, the patio looks over a man-made lake. At each estate, the dogs have free rein.

Man, if my two middle-class mutts catch wind of this, they're going to form a union and go on strike.

One, two, three, four...

We're tired of sleeping on the floor!

Staying safe out there

As for Miss Poop, she counts her blessings in simpler ways. "There's nothing worse than having a bag with a hole in the bottom," she says.

Many of the homes she services have teenagers in them, and she says, "Sometimes I wonder why people don't have their kids doing this."

Don't hold your breath, Miss Poop.

After each stop, she sterilizes her hands and tools. The risk of disease is an occupational hazard, she says. Last summer she contracted pleurisy from, according to her doctors, breathing in airborne bacteria.

When Hughes started this business, the reaction from family and friends was subdued. "A lot of them were almost embarrassed for me. Some would say, 'How can you lower yourself?' " she says. "But I'm not lowering myself. I'm starting up a business."

She has 25 clients and is adding more each week. Her goal is to get big enough to support herself entirely on, well, her wealthy clients' weekly doos.

She dreams of someday having a staff of pooper-scoopers who can fan out across the region, keeping suburban backyards safe for barefoot croquet. But, no matter how successful the business gets, she says, "I think I'll always keep my hands in it."

Uh, Miss Poop? Maybe we should rephrase that.