City Paper: An Urban Naturalist's Guide To Crap

[matcom]

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In community meetings and on neighborhood message boards, there are few hotter topics than poop. While talk of dog-curbing dominates the discourse, plenty are eager to identify varmints in or around their homes by examining the stool samples they leave behind. Turns out, though, most of us don’t know crap.

Over the summer, for instance, one city resident shared with a community message board his discovery of feces “deep brown/black in color, and shaped like Jordan almonds and about the same size.” He attributed the Italian-wedding-favor-shaped dung to a deer, claiming to “have seen deer scat many times.”

Many poop watchers attribute the droppings they find on their properties to deer, eager to believe that the pellets fertilizing their shrubs have been deposited by a majestic buck or gentle doe. The truth is, unless you’ve spotted deer in the area—as the poster did—turds of candied-nut proportions could easily have come from a large rabbit. Furthermore, mealy little pebbles of dung probably mean a rat infestation, and that big steaming pile likely came out of not some sort of wild pony but rather a neighborhood pipehead using a secluded toolshed as a lavatory.

So, to help local residents better figure out exactly which animals are scampering, scurrying, and, of course, shitting in their backyards, the Washington City Paper has assembled a team of experts to describe, in detail, the droppings of creatures most commonly sighted in the Washington area.

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http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/special/2006/poop0127.html