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Thursday, February 27, 2014

Serious Question: What's Crapping On My Balcony?

I'm nine floors up in outer Scarborough (or, as we call it down here, The Bro), facing West, and every once in awhile I find animal poop on the balcony of my condo unit.  Too big for a mouse or rat--and how could they get up here anyway?-- not a furry pellet like owls produce, and not an acidy splat like pigeons or gulls. I figure I'm dealing with  a hawk of some kind, as I've seen them flying among the buildings and resting on balcony railings in the afternoon when nobody's home.  Its kind of neat to think a red-shoulder perched on my patio chair, sleeping, and they are welcome to do so.  Bit rude to abuse my hospitality like that, however.


10 comments:

  1. If it's a greenish cylinder shape, it could be Canada Goose.

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  2. Try teasing it apart - what you find inside it will give you a clue.

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  3. give it taste test

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  4. I detect a lack of seriousness in these responses. A picture of the poop may be coming, however, just in case any real ornithologists happen to read this blog.

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  5. Don't know about these others, BCL, but I was perfectly serious. If it's full of little bones and hair (consists of little else, actually), it's an owl or a raptor. Poorly-digested herbaceous material, probably a goose.

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  6. Thomas Mulcair?

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  7. I suggest feeding the bird of variety of food items, until you get a flock. then you can get more samples and send them to a lab. Or to an online specialist. I mean its soo obvious, Im surprised you had to ask us.

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  8. Anonymous6:32 PM

    To rodents 9 stories is nothing. I've seen rats and mice in all buildings and at every level. Nothing matched the monsters I saw in subterranean London down by the Thames though.
    The turd doesn't sound like the pellet of a rodent though, but don't that relax you too much - they are probably in your wall voids, the ducting and crawl spaces.

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