Dear JOAN: I am trying to figure out what is pooping on my dorsum lawn. It has been going on for the past two years.

I don't have any pets and our grand is completely fenced in. I do have a fish pond, but all the fish disappear every bit soon as I stock it with goldfish.

I have seen cats, raccoons and opossums coming to go a potable of water at night. I have eliminated the cats because they usually bury theirs and I have a lot of soft soil for them to exercise that. I I saw recently did look like it belonged to cats. It was reddish and a very thin coil. The rest were ordinary brown.

I have narrowed it downwards to the raccoon and opossum. The deposits are well-nigh the size of a small canis familiaris.

I would like to discourage this behavior. Would a repellent sprayed around the perimeter work or but be a waste of fourth dimension? I did use 1 of those flashing red lights for a few years, only information technology has worn out.

Practise yous have whatever suggestions?

Gloria Lambert, Santa Clara

Love GLORIA: Playing "who pooped this" is a popular game among my readers. Information technology's an unsavory topic, but it's important to know what animals are visiting your backyard so you can stave off trouble.

Starting time of all, not all cats bury their waste, and when cats are battling over territory, they leave their excrement exposed every bit a smelly sign declaring this area as belonging to them.

To know what beast is leaving their droppings, y'all demand to take a good expect at the scat. When yous say it's the size of a minor canis familiaris, I hope yous're referring to the size of the poop a small-scale dog might leave. Poop the bodily size of a small dog would point you take dinosaurs in your backyard.

A raccoon'due south feces are 2 to 3 inches long, tubular in shape and, when fresh, dark dark-brown. You should be able to run into $.25 of undigested food in the stool. Raccoons also tend to create latrines, pooping in the aforementioned general identify every fourth dimension.

Opossum debris are surprising big, with smooth sides and tapered ends. The scat too can be a bit curly.

It as well could be from a fox or coyote. Their droppings are like to each other — and to dogs' poo — although the coyote's is larger. In both cases, the poo will contain a lot of things that weren't digested, such as vegetable and fruit seeds, and fur or pilus from any casualty they've eaten.

My all-time approximate, based on your description and the fact that your fish continue disappearing, is that the phantom pooper is a raccoon. Chemical deterrents practice assistance, although when you lot have a big area to embrace, they are not equally effective. Physical barricades are useful, merely expensive and involve lots of labor. I'd replace the ruby-red light device and consider draining the pond for a while.

DEAR JOAN: We have a single hummingbird feeder, and I oft come across ane hummingbird get-go drinking, then immediately a 2nd hummingbird bird arrives and scares away the first. Are they being territorial? Are they from different competing flocks? Or is it a mating ritual?

Roger, Bay Area

Dearest ROGER: It's not mating flavour and hummingbirds don't course flocks. It is all about territory.

You can try adding some other feeder. If there's plenty of food, hummers don't tend to fight about it. Sometimes, nevertheless, some neat hummers merely won't share.