Why?

I walk past this cafe in Toulouse almost every week day on my way to le jardin des plantes, but there's sommit a bit odd about it. Notice anything?

Comments

[santos.]

my neighbours do this. supposedly it keeps away dogs (and cats), so they won't do their business in front of this business. however, none of my dogs seem to care, and i've seen more than one neighbour use the water in the bottles to wash of their dog's feet after they've trampled through the neighbour's muddy puddles. ha!

[santos.]

or maybe the business is haunted or the owners are recently bereaved (and from a pacific island):

http://www.paghat.com/bottles.html

(for the record, while i live in micronesia, the only time i see bottles of water around something is not because of ghosts but because of dog poo)

[Graham]

Well spotted Santos, I suspect - what with this being deepest France - the dog end of your stick is the right (dirty) end. I've seen bags of water hannging in restos in Vietnam and was told that was for flies, couldn't figure out what this would do in France though. And how does this work anyway? Are cats and dogs freaked out by bottles of water?

[SweetClara]

Yes...I thought it might be for the dogs too...I have heard that they outnumber the people in france...:O)

[santos.]

the thought is that cats and dogs will not urinate/defecate nearby fresh sources of water. which is totally odd to me--the water is in sealed plastic bottles, do they even understand what it is?? maybe that's why it doesn't work.

the bags of water, however, theoretically work, but only regarding houseflies and not other flying insects. the water acts as sort of a mirror that reflects the people below; houseflies see the shifting of light and dark as nearby movement, so they stay away. supposedly it works better if there's a little foil in the bags as well.

[Graham]

Blinkin' nora, you're clever, or did you swallow the Encyclopedia Brittanica this morning? now if you could just tell how I can possibly get two MP3 audio files one of 86.6MB and the other of 133.4MB to this bloke in London I would be mightily impressed.

Trying to upload them to a silent Typepad blog, so he can pick them up - but so... s...ll...oo...w...

[santos.]

no, noods, i'm only good with quirky, not practical advice.

er, have you ever tried one of those FTP replacement services like yousendit or sendthisfile?

[AllanahK]

Here is NZ people put bottle of water on their front lawns to keep the dogs away but all it does is make people's front lawns look like a rubbish tip.

[Henry]

What I heard is that the bottles reflect the dogs image in a wierd way and they fell uncomfortable or scared; and thus dont defacate.

[Ewan McIntosh]

The recent comments from our Antipodean friends indicate a lot of mineral water anti-pee devices in NZ and Australia. There are a few more comments on my blog:
http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2008/02/cultural-differ.html

I was keen to see if this was a thing from the melting pot of French culture, but apparently old wives come together from all over the planet ;-)