Wellesley seems to have a porta potty problem

We’ve been inspired in the past to celebrate the springtime array of colors that porta potties and all their cleverly named siblings bestow upon Wellesley.

We’re sure when the full 2020 Census data is released we’ll learn that Wellesley is up to something like 1.5 porta potties per capita given the ubiquity of these colorful plastic booths around town. Home renovations, always active around here, have been seemingly more so since the start of the pandemic, with people funneling funds into that instead of trips, etc. The mellower winters have allowed home projects to go later in the year and start sooner as well, so potties never get much relief.

All of which has led to more of these colorful outhouses tempting pranksters, vandals, or however you’d describe them, to knock over the structures, hopefully without anyone in them. Similar stunts have made the rounds over the years on TV, the internet, and in movies, from Jackass 3D to Space Cowboys.

Even empty of humans, though, you can imagine the sloshing mess and inconvenience resulting from these toilet takedowns in real life. What some refer to as Wellesley’s version of cow tipping.

We were sent a photo of one porta potty felled near the high school in April, and soon regretted inviting readers to share captions after we posted it on Facebook. Turned out the owner of the home where this took place had been dealing with this issue more than once, and wasn’t buying speculation that it had blown over.

Mrs. Swellesley recently spotted prone potties at the Sprague fields, and an item about this has now shown up in the Wellesley Police log.

Another homeowner took to social media recently to share frustration over an outhouse overturned at their house caught on camera by a security device.

Wellesley Police were contacted and reportedly referred to the apparent tipsters as “the Volvo kids,” according to the homeowner. The homeowner’s not looking to press charges but would at least like an apology for what fortunately turned out not to be as messy as it could have been given that the latrine had just been cleaned.

While that homeowner hadn’t heard an update from the police, we did check with WPD this past week to see if there has been an uptick in such incidents.

“We do have these tipped over from time to time, but it does seem that is has happened more frequently this summer,” Lt. Marie Cleary told us. “Some of the victims have security footage of the individuals responsible and we are working on identifying them.”

One construction site in town has had its toilets knocked over 2 or 3 times so far this summer, Cleary added.

In the meantime, we suggest having a lookout if you do wind up needing to use one of these toilets in town.