This Labor Day weekend I was in Colorado for my friends’ wedding. For purposes of anonymity, I will call them Ben and Michelle. Congratulations, Ben and Michelle! Ben and Michelle’s wedding makes the ninth wedding I’ve been to this year, and the ninth wedding I’ve been to that’s not in NYC. And I’m not even done! “Put up a map with dots showing where you’ve gone for weddings this year!!” you say? What a great idea – I think I shall! Ben and Michelle’s wedding was lovely and I had a great time seeing all my friends…but don’t worry, that is not this story. This story is about poop and how some people have no appreciation for forensic science.
Instead of hotelling up on the 7th most expensive weekend of the year plus at wedding rates, a bunch of us decided to combine saving money with trying out our own version of “The Real World” and got a cabin. Not only was this cabin midway up a giant, no-oxygen supplying hill, but it had several steps going up to the front door. 16 to be precise. So schlep our asses up and down the hill and steps every day, several times a day, we did, because such are we, the dedicated friends. On our first day there, we noticed that on the 5th step up from the bottom there was a little pile of animal droppings. Judging by its color and level of moisture it seemed to contain, I determined that it wasn’t freshly laid poop, but it was moderately dangerous enough to cause psychological damage and disgust if stepped in. The steps themselves weren’t the narrow efficient kind that you’d find inside a house; rather they were the low, wide, squarish kind, where you think you can ration one foot per step as you ascend, but they are so deep that by the 4th step you find you can’t reach the next step with just one big leap and you end up needing to do a hop/skip to avoid missing that step. Or maybe that’s just if you’re short like me. The point is, the steps were large enough that the poop was easily avoidable, however, as Concerned House Member #5, I never neglected my duty to always and consistently remind people to not step on the poop.
By the end of day two, our cabin was designated as The Spot for all after-after parties. Needless to say, I felt quite pleased to be one of the It Crowd - nothing says I’m Really Cool more clearly than saying, well, “I’m really cool” OR, “Yeah, actually, it’s at MY house,” when someone drunkenly slurs “Are zhyou going to the after-party? There’s gonna be a hot tub and foothzball!” Of course, this did not come without a minor concern. See, as much as that hill lacked oxygen, it also lacked lighting. Newcomers would be completely ignorant of the mischievous pile of poop, which lay in quiet anticipation of innocent and clean shoes. Short of sitting out on the stoop and shining a flashlight on the fecal matter as everyone arrived, the best I could do was simply worry.
The next day, we left the house for brunch, marveling on what great hosts we were and what a fun night the previous one had been. Of course, I was giddy to find out if my anxiety had been warranted, and lo and behold, Someone Stepped in the Poop! “Someone stepped in the poop!” I yelled to no one in particular. And no one in particular seemed to care. “But guys, don’t worry, it looks like it was stepped on as someone was going out, not as someone was coming in. So, it didn’t get tracked all over our carpet. We’re safe.” That got one person’s attention. Marvin asked me how I knew. I elaborated that upon inspection of the now disturbed poop, the piece that had broken off from the original pile was positioned slightly away from the house, not towards, which due to humans being bipedal only could have happened if someone had kicked the pile upon leaving the house. I also noted that it had dried out significantly so as to pose much less bacterial harm in case it had in fact gotten tracked into the house. Marvin then commented that I would make a good detective, to which I was about to proudly attribute my Holmesian prowess to one of my favorite shows CSI (followed closely by CSI: Miami) when Spazzy Tazzy declared “Artemis, you’re a freak!” and immediately shut down the conversation.
It is still to be determined though, who left the dookie pile. It was definitely not that of a black bear’s, which, if you come across you should do this.
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