Shit

Heh. I bet that blog title got your attention.

Yes, indeed, I am writing about poop. As if heat and smoke weren't enough, I am having a plague of poop.

Cat poop, dog poop, raccoon poop. A lovely trifecta.

CAT

This dusty dry area where I cleared annuals that had gone to seed and then fried in the heat and drought has now become the local cat box for every cat within a ten-mile radius of my house. I have plans to plant this area up pretty thickly with perennials, which I hope will eventually deter them. I've resigned myself to finding cat poop in the garden, I don't know if there's much more I can do about it.

Also, look at my little pineapple guava, there on the left. So far it has survived our summer from hell. Yippee! Now if it can just make it through winter.

 

DOG

There is a dog in the neighborhood that is allowed to run free, and although I've never seen it happen, I think it might be pooping at the end of my driveway.  Although I have to wonder, it's always in the same spot, in the river rock parking area along the street, which makes me wonder if it's just someone walking their dog who can't be bothered to pick it up. Because, wouldn't a dog running around leave it everywhere?

It's always in that area on the left, which is over-run right now with weeds, but actually contains river rock, and at the moment, although you can't see it in the picture, at least 5 mounds of dog poop.

If the river rock were cleared of weeds it would look more like this, which I was weeding until our recent heat and smoke wave. You can probably see where I stopped.

So, what do I do about the dog? Put up a sign? "My garden is not your dog's toilet. Please pick up after it." Nigel says I should fill the gravel up with Opuntia and Agaves.

RACCOON

Before our recent heat and smoke wave hit, I was also working on redoing the area pictured below. I took out a twinberry honeysuckle that had become hopelessly overgrown, and in the process got a brainwave.

The area is right at the end of the raised beds that are going to become my cutting garden next year, so wouldn't it be a perfect spot for a bench? Underneath the Douglas firs, right by the colorful bottle tree. I could put some gravel down there and line it right up with the raised bed. Picture perfect.

Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me, it looks like the raccoons have been using that area right under the trunk of the Douglas firs as their toilet alllllll summer long. It is full of raccoon poop.

Yes, I took photos of it, just in case you ever need to know what raccoon scat (technical term) looks like, or want to show off your skill, tracking one through the forest.

Don't want to see it? Get ready to scroll fast.

Poop

Poop

Poop

Shit

You know, raccoons carry dangerous diseases in their poop, right? So, I need to put on a haz-mat suit and clean it up. And once I've cleaned it up, I need to figure out how to keep them from continuing to do it. I'm thinking of laying chicken wire over the soil, all around the Douglas fir.

Have you got any other ideas?

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Oh. My. God. I wrote a post about poop. And you read it. All the way to the end. Here, to reward you for getting through it, are some pictures of pretty Begonias.

Also, please pray to the god of poop that my toilets keep working.