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Brentwood Press - Index

Brentwood Press - OakleyPress_10.03.08 - Index

OCTOBER 3, 2008 OUTDOORS BRENTWOODPRESS.COM | 15A
Inside scoop 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 I was busy fumbling for my
TAKE IT
OUTSIDE
GER
ERICKSON
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 morning
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, naturalist John
Mottashed of the Livermore Area Recreation
Park District introduced 11 explorers in excrement
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
Photo 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.
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!”