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Curb Your… Ectoplasm?

(For several weeks, I was unable to transfer pictures from my fancy new cameraphone to… well, anywhere, actually. So I did what any tech-savvy compunerd worth his salt would do — I waited, and hoped the problem would go away.

It did.

Now, I can email pics from the phone to my account, and link them up here when the mood strikes. This exciting technological breakthrough allows me to offer posts like the following.

I apologize in advance.)

A few weeks ago, our elderly neighbor next door passed away. Even though the house is vacant now, I’ve continued the habit of mowing his strip of front yard when I venture out to trim my own lawn. I was pushing the mower a few feet onto his property this weekend when I discovered this:

Puzzling Poo

What you see there is a prodigious poop pile, of origins unknown. That’s my shoe — my size twelve sneaker — next to (most of the) pile, for the sake of comparison.

(Monkey / Roofie: “Size twelve? Rawr!”

Oh, you girls!)

Now, I’m not so concerned about this particular bit of crapcake on the lawn. First of all, it’s not my lawn, technically, even though I’m keeping the grass manageable until someone new moves in. And it’s not like I’m ever going to step in the mess. This isn’t a poop pile you ‘step in’, so much as ‘bump into’. But I can see the thing from across the fricking street, so I’m pretty sure I can manage to avoid it.

No, what keeps me awake and shivering at night is not knowing what produced a turd tower such as this.

(Not into the ‘turd tower’?

Would you believe ‘manure minaret’? How about ‘poop-amid?’ ‘Offal obelisk’? ‘Scatscraper’?

I could do this all day. Let’s just move on.)

I don’t know for sure what deposited the poop pillar (one more!) on the lawn, but I’ve come up with four theories:

1. My dog did it.

Certainly, the mutt’s had opportunity. And talk about motive — you try eating horsemeat and rawhide for a few weeks, and see whether you feel like fertilizing some schmuck’s grass.

But means? I don’t think so. Our dog weighs forty pounds. I’m not dropping those turds on a scale to compare, but I can guarantee you that if that scat came out of our pooch, she wouldn’t be walking around today. The mutt could shit two lungs and a kidney, and it still wouldn’t be that big.

I suppose it’s possible the dog’s been dropping dung in exactly the same spot for a week or two, and building the pile up gradually. But that would require a level of premeditation, planning, and frankly accuracy that I’ve never observed in her. She sometimes misses the water dish when she’s drinking, and licks the wall instead. Somehow, I doubt she spontaneously worked up a Letterman-worthy number two trick.

Also, it’s unlikely that any other dog left the pile. Our house is perched atop a little hill, with three dozen steps leading up. People do come by and curb their dogs by our curb, but the pile of poo in question is thirty feet away and five yards higher than that. I’m not seeing it. I haven’t pissed the neighbors off that badly.

2. My wife did it I did it.

Look, I know I didn’t do it. I enjoy the occasional Guinness, sure, but I’m certain I haven’t been far enough gone to use the front lawn as an impromptu latrine. Not since college, anyway.

And if I had been the culprit, I’d have taken pictures way before now. Hell, that’d probably be our Christmas card shot.

On the other hand, I can’t absolutely vouch for my wife. I don’t keep tabs on her every second of every day.

But on the other other hand, if I were to even hint that she could have made poops in the yard — or produced poop that big in the first place — she’d surely beat at least that much crap out of me. And not in a good way. So let’s move on.

3. The circus is in town.

“I can’t think of any animal indigenous to our neighborhood that could possibly leave that large a pile of poop and live.”

I can’t think of any animal indigenous to our neighborhood that could possibly leave that large a pile of poop and live. And there are no squirrel or chipmunk carcasses evident near by, so there’s only one rational natural explanation: A tiger, or a moose, or an elephant or something has escaped from a travelling circus and taken a dump on the lawn. That, or it’s one of the gyspy carny folk travelling with them.

Either way, this mystery manure is starting to smell an awful lot like Barnum and Bailey. I’ll check the papers for the summer circus schedule, so I know to where to ship the shit back.

Of course, there’s always the supernatural explanation…

4. The old neighbor did it.

Sure, the guy’s gone now — but he did live in the house for literally sixty years. And his plumbing was never all that good. Nor, for that matter, were the pipes in his house.

So would it be all that shocking if his ghost was wandering around the old stomping grounds, keeping an eye on things? And sometimes a ghost’s gotta go — everybody poops, right? I’m starting to wonder whether these are some sort of spectral droppings, shimmery turds from the great beyond. It’s not the most comforting explanation, but it certainly wraps the mystery up neatly.

I’ll keep an eye on things out there. Hopefully, this is a one-time occurrence, and some day we’ll look back and laugh about the ‘Mystery of the Gigantic Guano’. Until then, though, I’m keeping the doors locked, buying an extra shovel, and keeping a close eye on my wife the dog. You can never be too careful when there’s mysterious manure afoot.