Much Ado About Poo

A few months ago, there was a frog in the shower. There wasn't much to-do about it, as Dad was the one to find it, and the boys were taking showers. Had it been the girls, there likely would have been lots of screaming and running and crying. So it almost went unnoticed. Then, a couple days later, Mom found this in the guest room (adjacent to the bathroom):

Mom's suspicions were instantly aroused, and a vague memory rekindled from days in Papua New Guinea. The last time she had seen droppings like that, it was on our back porch in PNG. She had asked our helper, who said it was a mutmut - a very large rodent. (Those R.O.U.S's of Princess Bride fame are real!) The helper had reassured mom not to worry because the mutmut lived in our bamboo in the backyard and only came out at night so we would never see it - not the most comforting thought, but we really did never see it and over time it was forgotten. . . .

. . . Until we found rather suspicious-looking poo in the guest room in December. Mom found the Australian name for the mutmut - bandicoot - and began scouring the internet for photos of bandicoot droppings, and researching if such animals are found in the Philippines. She was sure this was exactly what she had seen before. With a large, gaping hole in our screen door, anything was possible. If, perhaps, it wasn't bandicoot, she began to wonder what it could be. It was too big to be rat, but could be a small cat. Plenty of those roam around the house, though we certainly would have noticed a cat inside. She also checked photos of bat, snake, and monitor lizard poo.

Meanwhile, as Mom fretted and weighed the possibilities, Dad was much more logical in his approach. He was certain that we would have heard a small animal and would have seen (or heard) more evidence from most of those than one single dropping. For him, there was only one possibility, so he looked only for images of frog poo. To Mom's complete surprise (after all, frogs are much too small to leave behind something that large!!), Dad was right.

After a short time, our 'guest frog' was forgotten for a few months - until last weekend. Mom again stirred the pot, making everyone think twice about what they find lying around. Late Friday night, when no little noses were awake to smell the chocolate, Mom baked a batch of brownies. Just before we headed out the door for basketball Saturday morning, she carefully shaped and strategically placed a few brownie pieces. When we came back in after a few hours, the dining room was littered with 'droppings' and we called on the boys to help us investigate. Our boys had learned well from the previous incident and immediately guessed frog or small cat.

As they searched the house for the animal which was likely still around somewhere, Noah voiced his doubts - it certainly looked a lot like chocolate, and it was April Fool's Day, after all . . . Mom challenged him to taste it and he didn't hesitate long before popping one in his mouth - and then reaching for another. Even after seeing that, Aden held one in his hand gagging a bit before taking a bite and Wiley psyched himself up repeating the phrase "it's chocolate, it's chocolate..." 

They had so much fun with it that they requested their brownies be shaped into poop to go with  their ice cream that night! And, we were sure to caution them not to eat such things they may find around the house in the future!