29 July—Over 600 Litchfield and Morris residents have petitioned Commissioner Katie Scharf Dykes of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to do the job she’s being paid for and clean up Bantam Lake, whose water quality is shamefully unhealthy, to say the least. Lotsa luck to them.

Because Katie Dykes only cares about killing bears and putting electric cars on the road. That’s confirmed by her ultra-green curriculum vitae, which includes her chairing the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) when it was a notoriously do-nothing agency. More recently, Katie lobbied for bear hunting and she’s currently doing all she can to screw all users of fossil fuels. Just a few days ago, in fact, always hungry for power, she insisted yet again that she needs more “regulatory authority to reduce emissions and provide cleaner options for consumers.” So what else is new?

Thus, DEEP and its commissioner naturally segue to scat. Scat, of course, is a polite noun that means the excrementitious droppings of usually carnivorous wild animals. It’s otherwise known, inter alia, as dung, feces, poo, or poop. But never shit. Except where it concerns government. And a little bichon frisé would never deposit scat. (Excremental philology is a subject for another disquisition.)

Anyway, on 16 April, while clearing away some fallen limbs around the former hay shed (now a storehouse for black walnuts deposited by an incredibly industrious squirrel or squirrels), I came upon some scat of a type I was unfamiliar with.

Truth be told, even though I’m familiar with literary scatology, I must confess that I have only minimal knowledge of scientific or physical scatology: I usually know when I encounter scat. But I was totally mystified by that scat. So I photographed it, hoping I’d find something similar on Google.

But I didn’t. So I emailed the picture to Katie’s DEEP and begged its expertise in scat ID: “Found this in our meadow in Litchfield today. Never seen anything like it. Any idea what animal left it?”

Next day, I got this polite boilerplate reply from a DEEP employee: “Thank you for your email. I am forwarding your message to the Bureau of Natural Resources, Wildlife Division for a response.”

A month later, not having heard from the Bureau of Natural Resources, I tried again. Same thing in June. Yet again in July. And those lazy SOBs in the Wildlife Division still haven’t even bothered to acknowledge the original email that had been forwarded by a fellow DEEP employee.

But I can’t say I’m surprised at DEEP employees doing nothing but collecting handsome paychecks. It must be 20 years ago on a beautiful summer Sunday that I came across a clearly rabid coyote in what was then the pasture. Poor thing was just sitting, whining, clearly in pain, looking dreadful, and foaming at the mouth. So I called 911 for an emergency response but was told to call the barracks. It was Sunday. So I called the barracks for an emergency response and was given a direct number to the Wildlife Division. It was Sunday. So I called what was then the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for an emergency response.

A person at the DEP actually told me, “It’s Sunday, call the Litchfield Barracks.” Typical DEP/DEEP employee. Couldn’t be bothered doing his job. Especially on Sunday, when he was probably getting overtime for warming a chair. So I was forced to put the poor coyote out of its misery myself. The only time I’ve ever killed an animal.

Here’s a picture of the scat. Any ideas?