A Friday Mystery.

**If you don't like gross stories, stop reading now.**

Okay.  So, we have a picnic table in our back yard.  We hardly ever sit at it, but it's out there to make us look more outdoorsy than we are (kind of like the roof racks on my car).

Sometimes when Reilly is here he'll jump up on it and bark at things, and sometimes when I'm chatting on the phone I'll go outside and sit on top of it, but other than that, it doesn't really get any use.

It's just a standard picnic table.  Nothing special about it at all.

Well, there was nothing special about it until yesterday.  See, I had gone out to the back yard to take pictures of Mitch (because he's going for a Guinness record for most photographed dog), and after snapping away and asking him a billion questions in that tone of voice that will make him cock his head just enough to the side to make my heart melt one hundred times over, I noticed something bizarre.

On the bench of the picnic table (the bench!) was a large pile of feces. 

In other words, something--or someone--pooped on the picnic table.*

It was right where the star is!  But how?

But who?  And why?  And how?

I'm not sharing this with you because of the "gift" left to us on our table so much as I'm sharing it because it's a great mystery.  So far I've been able to rule out both Mitch and Reilly as Picnic Table Poopers.**  I suppose it could have been a neighborhood dog, but I never really see any dogs around here that are bigger than Mitch, and the pile suggested that it was a large creature.  Plus, you know how dogs are all neurotic when they're doing their business.  The bench itself isn't wide enough for a large dog to spin around in circles, and it's far enough away from the top of the table to make it difficult to go at it from the top.

So here's what I'm left with: I think it was a person.  And I think we were the target of Savannah's Picnic Table Pooper.  Maybe the person was trying to protest the fact that we still have our Christmas lights up.  Maybe it was a student of mine.  Maybe there's just some drunk hobo wandering the neighborhood pooping on people's picnic tables.  Maybe some cheating Amish fellow read the blog (which he wasn't supposed to be doing!) and decided to find us and punish us in the best way he knew how.

That said, who the fuck poops on a picnic table!? 

*You should know that Cassie strongly advised against posting anything on the blog about my Picnic Table Pooper mystery.  I rejected her sage advice, because sometimes I like to write about gross stuff (like here and here and here).

**I've also been able to rule out both Matt and myself as the Picnic Table Pooper***, because we'd been out of town.  Horray for alibis!

***Also, why is it so much fun to say "pooped on the picnic table" or "picnic table pooper"?  Try it.  Say it right now.  Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?