It’s what I said the other day, about the last things. This is the last theatrical Donald Duck short. In fact, he basically didn’t do anything until “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” except a short for the steel industry and a family planning short that I have got to find that frankly looks pretty offensive. (Okay, it’s on YouTube. We’ll get to it.) And, yes, this was theatrical; it initially aired with The Parent Trap, apparently. It looks like the sort of thing that got played in schools a lot; by the time of my ’80s childhood, it was. But originally, in the theatre.

A ponderous narrator tells us about various insect pests, and we’ll get back to that bit, because wow. Anyway, we can defeat all other pests except one—the litterbug. Personified by Donald Duck, because of course it is. The cartoon shows us all the nastiness of the litterbug. Littering throughout history. Littering from infancy to death. And it’s all pretty nasty stuff.

You’ll be pleased to know that, although the book the pests are described in is shown as by “Dr. D. D. Tee,” that’s not how the short suggests controlling mosquitoes. Why, goodness no! No, no, the short tells us quite happily about how we can control mosquitoes by spraying oil on swamps! It’s this weird combination of environmentalist and destructive—which, I suppose, is ’60s environmentalism for you. A lot of “it seemed like a good idea at the time” stuff.

This is one of the only cartoons I think I’ve seen where they show Donald as truly malicious in animated shorthand—when the cartoon is initially describing the symptoms of the litterbug, Donald’s hands (and it’s already complicated to talk about a duck’s hands, but anyway) contract into claws. I talk a lot about Donald Duck, Aquatic Sociopath, but it seems as though the cartoons don’t really believe he’s that bad. He’s a bit of a scamp, but he’s not really damaging! Except when he’s destroying the environment, apparently.

To show you that the problem isn’t exclusively animated, this is also one of those rare shorts to include live action segments. Look, it says, here’s a mess in front of a “no dumping” sign. Humans suck! This is not, in my opinion, a problem that’s necessarily gotten better. We’re just better at having regular clean-up crews; I passed one alongside the stretch of freeway that runs through town here the other day. The short makes me feel better about the state of my car, though; at least that trash is in my car, not by the side of the road.

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