PT 1 – Was it REALLY Animal Poop Falling from Overhead?

Yes. Yes it was.

I’m at Foxbay cottage for a week of well earned rest and relaxation. Last Tuesday Sarah and I were sitting around the gas campfire and I noticed a small turd-shaped turd on the side table and I immediately contacted the cottage owner to get more information.

At first glance I thought it was an animal turd but also that it was the same size and shape (but not appearance) of the seeds of the tree above us. So when I heard one fall I just assumed it was from the tree. Even though when I broke it up with a stick it was all fibrous I thought there’s no way this is an animal poop. It’s probably just a baby-seed from the tree that has yet to turn into a proper seed. 

After we saw a squirrel jump from the tree we Google-image-searched “squirrel poop” and whilst the shape a colour were both good, the size was way off – these were way too big. 

I should qualify, one of the reasons we were so concerned about this is that Pepper ate one of the poops. And I read once that raccoon’s can spread terrible diseases in their leavings (raccoon was our first guess as to the source)

While I’ve never seen raccoon poop I assume it’s horrible and gross because racoons eat trash all day and you know the old saying – garbage in, garbage out – so I was leaning towards this not being a raccoon. 

I should also mention that at one point I felt some “rain” fall from the cloudless sky. Which was also unusual. At that point we started scanning the tree and we didn’t see any animals up there. 

Then like five minutes later we saw what appeared to be a rather large raccoon lumbering down the side of the tree.

It was starting to get dark and she noticed us so then she just parked herself on a branch. We moved in to take some photos and that’s when we discovered… 

It was NOT a raccoon at all. It was GIANT porcupine. 

After we snapped some pics I showered the porcupine pee off me and then started the BBQ. As I was cooking up the burgers I heard a noise in the bushes and I watched our new spiky neighbour walking towards the next cottages, never to be seen again…

Or was she…