i'm glad he didn't step in it

I read this morning a story from China in which a farmer there had seen poop from a giant panda and that is good news. The story went on to say that the farmer saw an animal that looked very much like a giant panda while collecting bamboo leaves, and then later on he saw what he believed to be panda poop.

I remember one time when I was cutting my grass, I saw an animal that looked very much like a dog and then later I saw what I believed to be dog poop in the path of my lawn mower. I will admit that I went ahead and ran over it (the poop; not the dog), but made sure I sidestepped the ground-up defecation the next couple of trips around the yard.

Some more environmentally conscious readers may ask, “Jimbo, how did you know it wasn’t panda poop? You may have destroyed valuable evidence of panda migration onto the rural Midwestern lawn you were cutting?”

A tough question, but justified, so let me address it.

Once, I was taking a walk near a farm where cattle were grazing in the pasture. I noticed a steaming brown gelatinous pile on the ground and I concluded (without formal training) that it was bovine defecation. When I was a child, my family went to a parade and there were people dressed as cowboys and cowgirls on horses. After the parade we walked across the street and I saw a brown pile of something in front of me. Even without extensive equine exposure, I was able to ascertain it was horseshit. In both instances, I walked around, rather than through, these malodorous leavings.

At various times in my life, my family has had pet dogs and it has been necessary at times to move their droppings to areas less traveled in order to avoid family, friends and strangers from striding through them. Through these exercises I have learned to identify canine feces, so on that warm summer afternoon as I negotiated my lawn mower over the yard in a pattern of rectangles of decreasing size, I could be confident in my positive identification of the dog dung.

I would like to believe that had I been in the situation of the Chinese farmer and I had seen the animal he saw, I would have concluded the som’ bitch was a panda. Shortly after, seeing the droppings, I would like to think that I would have concluded they were panda droppings. However, this is not a common animal, so I can understand why the farmer called in the feds. The wildlife management experts he told about it came in and made a positive ID. I'd prefer not to be familiar with their testing methods.

Somehow, however, I can’t help but be reminded of the old Cheech and Chong routine where they come across some dung on the sidewalk and they examine it. They smell it, feel it, taste it and finally conclude, “I’m glad we didn’t step in it.”

Because in Jimbo’s world we like to watch where we step.