KUROSHIO, Kochi Prefecture–Blind from cataracts and hobbling on more and more feeble legs, a Boston terrier right here continued her routine of accumulating and discarding plastic bottles washed up on shore.
But finally her physique gave out.
After eradicating an estimated 4,000 bottles from Irino seashore over a decade and proving an inspiration to each people and animals, Ikura died of old age on the morning of June 14. She was 13.
“I miss her so much,” Nobuyuki Niiya, 63, stated of his departed pet canine.
Irino seashore is a famed browsing spot in Kuroshio on the primary island of Shikoku. Niiya owns a browsing store within the city.
The seashore additionally grew to become identified for the cleansing techniques of Ikura at a time when world consciousness was spreading about plastic waste fouling the planet’s oceans.
Niiya took Ikura on every day morning and night strolls alongside an roughly 1-kilometer route on the seashore. One by one, she would choose up plastic bottles in her mouth and take them to a trash assortment website by the shore.
Surfers and youngsters took up the behavior of selecting up trash on the seashore after seeing Ikura retrieve at the least one bottle on every walk.
She earned the moniker “plastic bottle dog” and was featured many occasions in newspaper and TV studies.
Ikura developed cataracts a few 12 months in the past and misplaced her eyesight, however she used her sense of odor to proceed accumulating the trash.
However, her legs started to totter. And by round May, Ikura may now not walk.
“I wished she could have lived a little longer,” Niiya stated. “But Ikura did leave behind a successor to her mission of collecting plastic bottles.”
In February, Niiya acquired 1-year-old Uni, one other feminine Boston terrier, from an acquaintance in Geisei village, additionally in Kochi Prefecture.
During joint walks on the sandy seashore, Uni noticed Ikura drain her final ounce of power to gather plastic bottles. The younger terrier then started imitating Ikura.
Uni now crunches plastic bottles in her mouth as she takes them to the trash assortment website. She has retrieved at the least 50 bottles up to now.
“I have called out ‘Ikura’ by mistake many times at the sight of Uni rushing with a plastic bottle in her mouth,” Niiya stated.
Ikura’s cremated stays have been positioned in an upstairs room at Niiya’s store, which instructions a window view of the Pacific Ocean and Irino seashore, each of which Ikura adored.
The white seashore is now dotted with the footprints of Uni, who has taken over because the “plastic bottle dog.”
