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Brentwood Press - Index

Brentwood Press - AntiochPress_10.10.08 - Index

14A | BRENTWOODPRESS.COM COMMUNITY OCTOBER 10, 2008
Inside scoop wild on critter poop
Hit the trail often enough and you
see things that don’t want to be seen.
Last fall at Black Diamond Mines, a
grey fox trotted across the Corcoran
Mine Trail about 20 yards in front of
me – and in no particular hurry, since
TAKE IT
OUTSIDE
GER
ERICKSON
I was busy fumbling
for my camera. For
a precious minute
in the pale light of
dawn off-trail at
Round Valley this
spring I shared a
steep hillside with a
bobcat that glided
past me surprised
but unimpressed by
my existence. And
on a winter morn-
ing at Los Vaqueros three years ago, a
pack of four coyotes in single fi le loped
across the Vista Grande Trail not 30
yards from my respectful stare.
The fox, bobcat, the coyotes – all
well camoufl aged, all eager to avoid
contact with homo sapiens. I’m lucky
to have stolen such close encounters.
The irony is that in a charmingly
repugnant sense, I see those creatures
every time I go hiking. My secret? I just
look down. There on the trail is the
signature of their presence. No, it’s not
footprints – it’s feces.
In a recent visit to the Los Vaqueros
Watershed Interpretive Center, nat-
uralist John Mottashed of the Livermore
Area Recreation Park District
introduced 11 explorers in excrement
Photos by Ger Erickson
On the Kellogg Creek Trail at Los Vaqueros, above, naturalist John Mottashed
examines coyote scat spotted by the sharp eye of Bethel Island resident Ryan
Waller, right. The claw of a creature that woke up on the wrong side of the
food chain protrudes from a chunk of coyote scat, inset, characterized by its
segmented structure and profusion of undigested fur.
to the wonderful world of “scat.” And
we’re not talking improvisational stylings
of Ella Fitzgerald or Mel Torme.
We’re talking animal poop.
The scat that most of us encounter
in our manicured ’burbs gets scooped
into a plastic bag and plopped into the
trash. Out in the wild, those droppings
become a window into the world of the
creature that dropped them. “By looking
at scat, opening it up and examining
what’s inside, we can fi gure out
what animal left it, what its diet is – all
sorts of things,” said Mottashed, who
brought stool samples of a mountain
lion, bobcat and coyote, among others
– all preserved in krylon and sealed up
nice and tight in display bottles.
Spotting scat is one thing; identifying
the creature that left it behind is
another. “It takes years of experience
to get good at it,” said Mottashed, adding
that even his accomplished tracker
friends sometimes get stumped. For
example, the scat of two creatures similar
in size and from the same zoological
family – say, a mature bobcat and
a young mountain lion, both felines
– can be hard to tell apart.
But some rules of thumb are pretty
reliable. Canines such as coyotes leave
more tubular and segmented scat than
felines, whose leavings tend to be fi nely
tapered at one end. Like your family
feline, bobcats and mountain lions
sometimes bury their scat. Scratch
marks on the ground in the vicinity of
the rectal event are a good sign that a
cat has been out and about. Mountain
lions have also been known to leave
their scat on top of bobcat and coyote
scat as a way of asserting territorial
superiority.
In three to fi ve days, scat will dry
up and turn whitish, a helpful development
for waste watchers confounded
by fresh scat’s resemblance to sticks
and chucks of dirt. It didn’t take our
band of turd nerds long to locate a
spot where a coyote had evidently shot
some craps. Mottashed donned a pair
of latex gloves, picked up the scat and
pointed out the furry remains of the
small and hapless mammal the coyote
had donated for our enlightenment. He
broke open the scat and showed us a
tiny claw imbedded in the center, testimony
to the coyote’s indifference to
cuisine with an overly al dente texture.
One of the dos and don’ts of animal
doo-doo pertains to raccoon scat,
in which the roundworm parasite is
often found. That parasite, if ingested,
can be fatal. “That’s why, even though
I wear these gloves when I’m handling
scat,” said Mottashed, “I try not to
handle raccoon scat at all.” One of the
specimens the group found on the trail
contained some material Mottashed
identifi ed as Himalayan blackberries.
Since the creature in question might
have been a raccoon, we admired from
afar.
Although the identity of a few scat
samples eluded us, the trail revealed
a quantity and variety to delight the
most passionate devotee of dung. The
bad news: lots of stopping and starting
along the trail. The good news: in fecal
matters, it’s wise to maintain a slow
pace. When on poop patrol, the last
thing you want to hear from the guy in
charge is “Step on it!”