scat
**Definition:** Animal droppings examined for what they reveal — diet, health, species, time of passage, and the habits of a creature you may never see. Scat is the autobiography an animal writes without knowing it. Shape, size, color, contents, placement, and freshness each tell a different part of the story. A pile of bear scat full of manzanita berries is a paragraph about the season. A twisted, fur-filled coyote dropping on a rock at a trail junction is a sentence about territory. Owl pellets — regurgitated rather than excreted — are a related form: the compressed, undigested remains of prey, wrapped in fur and bone, dropped beneath a roost.
Animal droppings examined for what they reveal — diet, health, species, time of passage, and the habits of a creature you may never see. Scat is the autobiography an animal writes without knowing it. Shape, size, color, contents, placement, and freshness each tell a different part of the story. A pile of bear scat full of manzanita berries is a paragraph about the season. A twisted, fur-filled coyote dropping on a rock at a trail junction is a sentence about territory. Owl pellets — regurgitated rather than excreted — are a related form: the compressed, undigested remains of prey, wrapped in fur and bone, dropped beneath a roost.
Etymology
From Greek skor, skatos, dung. The scientific tone of the word gives permission to look closely at something most people step over.
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