Who Was That Helmeted Man?

I was sitting on a park bench, engrossed in Nissim's Taleb's new book Antifragile, when I detected a new aroma. I lifted my head and saw a woman and her dog walking away. On the ground, five feet from where I was reading, sat a fresh pile of dog crap, glistening in the late morning sun. Moving to another bench wasn't an option. Shaded park benches with free WiFi connections are a rare find in Cannes, and it was going to take a lot more than olfactory assault to dislodge me.
 

Despite the signs, free plastic bags and special poop receptacles, French dog owners seldom clean up their dog's residue, nor do they make any attempt to take their dogs away from heavily trafficked pedestrian paths to do their business. Hundreds of dog owners walk their animals along the crowded Rue de Antibes, Cannes's densest shopping street, without making any effort to curb their animals, often allowing them to urinate on the door jam at a store's entrance. This may be one of the reasons why the French buy so much perfume. 

As if it wasn't already hard enough to stay focused on Taleb's discussion of hidden convexity bias while slowly being asphyxiated, one of those annoying scooters that litter the country pulled alongside the offending pile. The driver revved the bike's whinny engine. At least the exhaust masked the previous stench; it was probably less noxious too. My immediate concern was that the rider was planning to use the excrement as a tire lubricant for a spin out. I looked him in the eye. He glared back at me, not a menacing stare, just a stern, serious expression. As we locked eyes he withdrew one of two long silver cylinders from a holster on the back of his bike, jammed it into the putrid pile and vacuumed the mess away. I smiled. He acknowledged my appreciation with a slight a nod of his head and then sped away on his scooter powered pooper scooper, a French Lone Ranger, sans Tonto, keeping Gallic streets safe for locals and tourists.