Raccoon Latrines

 Occasionally I cover gross things on this blog because, well, because in the country we just have to deal with gross things occasionally, you know.  Nature and the wildlife around here are endlessly fascinating to me, even the gross parts.

Back in California where I grew up we were in a very rural area and dealt with marauding raccoons off and on, especially in the corn patch and the orchard during the summer.  They were just a nuisance I grew up with.

I do have a very random but distinct memory of my knowledge of raccoons from when I was in 6th grade.

For an art project we were assigned to do a painting.  It must have been in spring, because for some reason I chose to do a painting of a raccoon eating an ear of corn in the corn patch.  Haha..  One boy thought that was the dumbest thing ever. He laughed at me and said, "Raccoons don't eat corn!" 

Ha! The joke was on him! The teacher, Mr Peterson, knew better from bitter experience I suppose, and corrected the kid.  For some reason I remember that clearly.

But I digress.

In all those years growing up I never knew that raccoons are latrine animals.  They prefer to poop in the same place all the time.  Usually it's at the base of a tree, or on an elevated area for some reason.  

A few weeks ago, maybe late summer even, a tree blew over in west field.  Here last week on a walk with the dog I noticed a raccoon had claimed it as his latrine.

*** POOP PICTURE WARNING ***

You can see clusters of scat all down the trunk. There must have been more than 10-12 piles.

This next pic of its scat was interesting to me.  You can get a sense of its diet.

The bottom pile appears to be a collection of undigested berries, the middle is full of persimmon seeds and the top pile looks as though he raided the neighbor's cat food.  I say that because it looks like dog doo to me, maybe the raccoon got into a neighbor's dog food.  

In conclusion, this raccoon trait is actually annoying because if I want to take a break during a walk and sit on a log I've always got to check for raccoon doo.  Plus, this log is going to get processed to heat our house this winter and we'll have to be super careful to always wear gloves when handling it.  Raccoon scat can have nasty parasites and/or diseases in it.  

But I still find this coon trait interesting.