On my first walk of the Djerassi grounds, I saw scat, tons of scat! And of course, I thought, THAT will go into the mud painting I make here.

But scat, it turns out is not just 'cat shit' or a caccoon enclosing a past self; it is a community footnote.

I learn about scat at a land-based dance rehearsal of the Network Project, directed by fellow resident Krista of Moving Ground and her many collaborators including fellow resident Chloe!

It is as we walk, that I meet Kathleen. She is a dancer with a cane, who tells me all about scat. 

She tells me how fox will leave their scat on top of bobcat and mountain lion scat as a kind of signature. She said, she even had a fox leave scat on a towel she left out to dry on her back porch. A kind of flourish, playful jest, or futile expression of decomposition dominance? 

Some animals will use it to mark territory, while others prefer to leave their scat in one consistent location - perhaps they think it is simply a fine view for peristaltic transformation?

When I asked Kathleen to help me understand WHOSE scat we were finding along the path, she said there were tricks.

Size: Fox is the smallest, then Bobcat, then Mountain Lion. However, of course, teenage mountain lion scat can be the same size as bobcat.

Ends: The ends of bobcat scat is blunt, the end of mountain lion is twisted and cone shaped.

But the definitive difference between mountain lion and bobcat - you have to take the scat between your fingers, squish, and smell. As bobcat has a very particular strong odor. 

 

To learn more about how to read scat, try the following pages from Val, my sister-in-law, very neat book:

 

When I actually got to collecting the scat, I realized, it was all bigger than the 1/2" opening of my plexiglass frame. So I put the scat in a bucket of water, in the hopes that I could get some of the microbes that were lodged in the scat, into my mud painting.

And that is when I realized, how everything is home to everything. that no matter where the scat and its microbes ended up, it was home. 

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The work of bell hooks on the Poetry Foundation

Section 3 of Appalachian Elegy (Sections 1-6)

3.

night moves

through the thick dark

a heavy silence outside

near the front window

a black bear

stamps down plants

pushing back brush

fleeing manmade

confinement

roaming unfettered

confident

any place can become home

strutting down

a steep hill

as though freedom

is all

in the now

no past

no present