Tracing his footsteps back from the doormat, he walked slowly, peering at the snow which was rapidly turning from sunset purple to the blue of the deepening night.  He was looking for the moment when the pistachio-brown stain stopped.  With each new print, the stains got thicker and thicker.

He was certain it was shit.

That much he knew from the odour that burnt his nostrils.

It was awful.  Sickly smelling.

What really bothered him was the colour.  And the texture.  It looked like a sick mustardy custard that had been tainted slightly by little chunks of something that looked resembled cottage cheese or avocado.

It wasn’t consistent either, but rather was streaked with something clear and gelatinous.

It was paradoxically revolting and fascinating

What creature had made this?

His mind raced over the possibilities.  He went through his mental catalogue of local fauna.

It could be a sick coyote.  Perhaps it had fed upon a poisoned piece of meat.  Some of the locals did that.  They held that the coyotes preyed upon the local sheep and were further a threat to the children.

Maybe a bear?   No, bear shit was much darker – almost black in fact and often full of half-digested berries.

He lived too far from the next neighbour, so he ruled out dogs.   Deer turds were round and those of the moose looked like chocolate covered almonds.

The tracks would tell all.  That is what was really exciting.  He could take a picture of the tracks and then search it on the internet.

He was almost to where his car was parked when he realized the stains had stopped.  He stopped and backtracked.  He turned the flashlight on his phone and peered carefully at the snow.

Oh god!  How had he missed that?

A concentric circle of gelatinous stool. lay unevenly sprayed  in the freshly fallen snow.  It looked like a comet.  A  miniature shit comet that had finally fallen to Earth and this was its impact crater.  It was almost two feet long, getting narrower as it moved away from the thickest part.

The phone light glistened a reflection of the not yet frozen stool.  He shone it around, searching in the near darkness for the animal tracks.  His eyes fell upon what looked like two human bootprints. They weren’t his. They were smaller, perhaps those of a woman or a child. The toe of each boot was clearly outlined in the snow, yet the heel of each was clearly outlined in faeces.  Human faeces he realized. Somebody had squatted right here, not long ago.

The tracks led a few feet away to a pair of narrow tire tracks.  These led away to the road, turned left and vanished.

He shook his head as he turned to walk back.  Some poor soul who was having a far worse day than him had stopped here to relieve themselves.  It probably was as desperate as it looked.

He chuckled softly to himself as he walked, then suddenly burst out laughing.

There was no toilet paper on the ground.  Anywhere.