Lately, I have been in what, charitably, could be called a poopy frame of mind.
Not to fear, loyal phelpspeakers.
You have all been very loving and patient as I’ve dealt with the double barrel blast of loss of livelihood and love.
And I’ve reached the place where I realize that it’s time to shut up and deal privately with my problems. (Just in case, though...ct…myvm and waly).
But, sparing any more of the gaudy details, I think it not incorrect or inordinately whiny to say that life has been like a bed of roses lately in one specific way.
There’s been a whole lot of fertilizer in it.
Which brings me back to thinking about crap.
And while researching some other work, I came across one of those great lists that our friends at mental floss dot com offer up each and every surfing day.
So as a public service to those of you who find the admittedly shitty subject of interest, I’m here to share with you five things that you probably didn’t know about poop. (credit to David at Mental Floss.com)
1. Bird poop is white because birds can’t pee. Their kidneys work like ours do, but instead of producing urine, birds excrete a white paste. The paste, along with what comes out of the intestines, unites and is excreted through the bird’s cloaca, a multi-purpose hole which means sewer in Latin. And, yes multi-purpose means they even mate through it
2. Many dogs eat poop. This I know because, sadly, my dog used to eat his own poop on occasion. What I didn’t know was that eating poop has a name: coprophagy, and is, of course, more popular with dung beetles than dogs. If your dog eats his/her own feces, one way to discourage the behavior (other than immediately cleaning up after your dog) is to douse the poop with hot sauce or vinegar.
3. The reason why some poops float is because they have a lot of gas in them. Rather than coming out as flatulence, the gas gets stuck in the poop and forces it to the surface of the water. If there’s a lot of fat in your diet, likewise your poop might float
4. Cavemen were better equipped to chew and digest many plants and vegetables. They had larger molars and longer digestive tracts better at handling foods rich in indigestible cellulose, like, er, corn, for instance. Evolution has worked against our ability to chew and digest corn, which is why when some kernels get swallowed whole they appear in poop
5. The word poop comes from the Middle English word poupen or popen, which used to be the root of the word we now call a fart. Clearly poop has onomatopoeic origins.
I hope that you have benefited from this little burst of knowledge and can now carry on with your life confident that should Alex Trebek ever do a salute to poop, you might well end up the Jeopardy champion.
As for me, I’m pretty much already up to speed, thanks.
First of all, there’s all that crap that I’ve been dealing with for the past few months.
And I live only 85.2 miles from Washington, DC.
Between that and the other, there’s not much about poop I don’t already know.
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