Why this sudden interest in waste, you say. Why waste this sudden interest, say I. I swear my recent colonoscopy had nothing to do with it. (It's OK, I can say that. Katie Couric had one on TV). Re: the procedure, I will step on my soap box for a second and say that if you are hesitating to do this, don't. The worst part is drinking the foul liquid for the prep. The twilight sleep anesthesia is so effective that even though you are conscious in some altered way, you wake up remembering nothing. They should find a way to administer it to you for select portions of your life.
No, what inspired me was walking on a trail that looked like it had just been hit with a shit storm. Shiny little brown beads of goat poop. So not-gross that I had to think for a second about what they might be. I was reminded of a story my grandmother used to tell my sister and me.When she was a child, "Mamy's" family would spend the summer in the Vosges Mountains of Alsace. Her father was consumptive, and the mountain air was supposed to have a healing effect. (Alas, all it did was provide him with a scenic place to cough. He died of tuberculosis when my grandmother was eleven.) In order to focus on caring for her husband, my great grandmother hired a temporary nanny, a fresh young peasant girl dressed in traditional Alsatian garb, including headgear in the shape of a giant bow. Her suitor would often stop by with a pink paper cone from the local confectionary, filled to the brim with shiny little round chocolates. This inspired my grandmother to retrieve an empty candy cone from the trash, stuff it with goat turds, and hand it to the nanny with the explanation that her "amoureux" had stopped by with yet another love token. Although it was never confirmed, my sister and I liked to imagine that the poor Nanny was duped and accidentally ate one of our grandmother's "chocolates". Now, as I looked down at the goat droppings all around me, I couldn't help but notice how much they looked like milk duds.
Never mind what you eat, you are what you poop. I notice all kinds of droppings on my hikes. I step around horse pucky on the bridle trails and cow pies in the meadows. I can tell when the deer have been by. I often ask myself, when I pass a particularly large and well-formed turd, if it came from a dog, a coyote, or – jackpot – a mountain lion! I see owl pellets a-plenty, a form of reverse scat consisting of regurgitated fur, feathers and bones. (Apparently, you can get owl pellets by mail order for middle schoolers to dissect in science class and figure out who got eaten.) But while I think nature is, forgive me, the shit, this is one case where my curiosity has its limits. I won't be developing my excrement expertise any further: There will be no dissecting doody at my house.
Shit show
It's a shitty job, but someone has to do it
Coyote ugly
Big cat scat
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