Fragments From Floyd

I’m following rabbit trails this morning leading off of the topic “why we need to change the way we tend our lawns and public right-of-ways”.

This, as we end yet another mowing season in which we cut as many times as usual, and spent twice as much on gas. But I digress from the subject at hand (poor phrase, perhaps) which is “poop”. Poop found in the woods is known as scat.

And some scat like this pictured here is not likely to appear in the Peterson Field Guide to Animal Droppings. This deposit found near Smartview campgrounds on the Blue Ridge Parkway was more of a drizzling than a dropping, and consisted almost exclusively of seeds–lots and lots of seeds, such that it is no small wonder the mystery critter got the runs.

But I don’t know what kind of seeds these are, and could not find on this walk the plant in fruit from which this animal food might have come. I know a lot of things it isn’t. Not blackberry (too late in season.)  Not wild raisin. Not hawthorne.

These shiny, plumb, black fattened lozenges have a distinctive loosely-coiled shape. Surely some poopologist out there can tell us what the source plant is, and maybe take a shot at what kind of animal left this spoor. Pass this along to others until we satisfy my morbid curiosity about what I almost stepped in.

Stumble it!