That's no typo - I'm looking for some help identifying some animal droppings I found in our yard today. We have regular visits from all types of local animals, deer being the largest we see. I've gotten pretty used to identifying the deer droppings. But today I found a pile that doesn't look like any of the deer droppings I've seen before - and this is too large to be anything small.
So, faced with unknown feces, I took a photo with my size 13 shoe next to it for a size comparison. I did some checking online for some of the larger animals native to this part of Oregon (Willamette valley, just south of Portland). My first thought was to black bear or cougar. Looking online, it would appear to me that this pile could be one of two animals: deer or black bear. And the photos I saw would indicate the bear may be the more likely. I know the deer droppings can clump, but one photo online in particular, from a bear, looked almost identical in size and shape to what I found.
Knowing there are some more knowledgeable folks than myself on this forum that can possibly identify this, I wanted to run it by you and see what you think. Does it look like deer or a small black bear? If it's bear, should I be concerned? We're semi-rural, but not that far out, so it's not something I would expect to see here.
Thoughts?
So, faced with unknown feces, I took a photo with my size 13 shoe next to it for a size comparison. I did some checking online for some of the larger animals native to this part of Oregon (Willamette valley, just south of Portland). My first thought was to black bear or cougar. Looking online, it would appear to me that this pile could be one of two animals: deer or black bear. And the photos I saw would indicate the bear may be the more likely. I know the deer droppings can clump, but one photo online in particular, from a bear, looked almost identical in size and shape to what I found.
Knowing there are some more knowledgeable folks than myself on this forum that can possibly identify this, I wanted to run it by you and see what you think. Does it look like deer or a small black bear? If it's bear, should I be concerned? We're semi-rural, but not that far out, so it's not something I would expect to see here.
Thoughts?