It's a Mystery! 07/06/11

There is a mystery at our house.  We have some sort of animal leaving us little “gifts”.  Well, they are not really that little and they aren’t gifts that you would want or where you would want them.  The first time we found one it was on our sidewalk.  It looked like a small cow patty.  It was small in comparison to a real cow patty but still probably five or six inches in diameter.  It was kind of blob like.  We figured it must have been left by a large dog although that isn’t really what it looked like.  A few days later, my husband took the puppy out to potty in the morning and there was another gift on our front porch!  It was very similar to the first one and totally disgusting.  Our sidewalk is concrete and our front porch is too.  Why would an animal be doing this on concrete?  Typically dogs choose grass to defecate on.  Anyway, we were gone for the weekend and happy to come home to nothing unusual.  Last night we were out until about midnight at a couple of late ballgames of my son’s.  When we got home, I took the puppy out to potty and there was another pile on my front porch!  It was a little more solid than before and had some parts that were more shaped like balls.  It was not tubular like a dog and the balls were about two inches in diameter.  I’m not really that familiar with animal scat so I googled it.  It’s not as easy to identify as you might think but my friend swears it’s a bear!  We are going to set up my husband’s game camera tonight so hopefully we can catch the offender in the act.  It may take a while but if we do, I will post the pictures on my blog so you will want to check back.  If anyone has a suggestion as to how to identify the offender or keep it from doing this, please leave me a comment.