A Poop Story

She Is Dallas info: The Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area (LLELA) is located at the corner of Jones and Kealy streets in Lewisville, Texas .   The property is open to the public Friday – Sunday.   Winter hours (Nov 1 – Mar 1) 7:00 am – 5:00 pm and Summer hours (Mar 2 – Oct 31) 7:00 am = 7:00 pm.   Entrance fees are $5.00 per person except children 5 and under are free.   LLELA accepts cash only.   For more information, please visit their website.

OK, well… We kept finding these great owl pellets along the path. What is an owl pellet you ask? Owls swallow their food but cannot process the fur & bones, So they “vomit” these leftovers formed into tight pellets. Science supply companies sell owl pellets, and as a middle school student I got to pick an owl pellet apart. Inside are tons of bones, teeth, a skull or two. It truly is fascinating stuff to see what the owl ate! So imagine my excitement when WE found owl pellets on our hike! I began picking at them with two sticks… but that was hard to pick out the bones to show the kids. Besides, what’s a little regurgitated fur & bones on your fingers before your picnic, right? So I started picking through them with my bare fingers. We had antibacterial wipes. We had antibac gel. I figured I’d be clean enough to eat later. There were certainly neat things in the owl pellets. We found part of a skull, perhaps a mouse? It had a row of tiny teeth along the jaw. Really neat! We also found front teeth that maybe belonged to a rat… some vertebrae… I had some extra ziplock baggies with us, so I started putting the owl pellets into the bag for us to take home and pull apart more. I could not get over how many owl pellets we were finding! When we got home, I emailed the educational director of our hike location to ask about what kinds of owls live in the area we were hiking. The email I got back turned my stomach. Apparently, while there are owls around the area, what I was digging through… with my bare fingers, right before I ate lunch… was COYOTE SCAT!!!!!!!! Yes, dear friends, Yours truly was digging into coyote crap. And I carried a bag of coyote crap home, and I split said bag of coyote crap with our friends to take home! Owl pellets really ARE cool, Coyote scat looks a LOT like owl pellets and are certainly NOT COOL. Moving on…. There were tons of footprints along the path… A raccoon (pictured to the left), deer, coyote (duh!), and dogs… There were also little bones scattered here & there, **Which I did not have to dig through feces to find.** Our keen-eyed buddy, ER, even found some real beaver teeth! . About 2/3 through our hike, we stopped by the creek for lunch….