50 Shades of Poo

I’ve witnessed my fair share of brown nosing and bull**** living in LA, but I have never been so bogged down with crap since I moved to the countryside.

When I was discussing this blog post with my my mum she warned me that I should air on the side of caution; not use the word “sh*t” or “shite” and maybe even reconsider “poo”. She told me her generation often sees it as crass and unnecessary. Well then I ask, if plop is so offensive to them why do the ‘Cocoon’ crew all flock here, to the epicenter of poop?

A walk around our ‘neighborhood’ involves crossing a field, dodging cowpats and Henley asking “what sort of poo is that?” way more times that we were used to in Los Angeles – although to be fair it was always dog sh** there.

By now you all know and are bored of the story of me carrying my son’s poo sample in a mayonnaise jar to hospital, but I haven’t told you about the fox that took a turd in my boxing glove and then stole the other one.

The same fox I told the kids to take a peak at through the  fence, “because you can get so close to them here” I said, only to realise it was ripping the head of a bird.

My Google history also contains a lot of questions I was never used to asking. My husband came back from a stroll down to the end of the orchard a few months ago and asked: “Have you ever seen a poo trifle? Well there’s one in the garden. It looks like several animals have been competing for the best poo, one on top of the other.”

My search engine informed me that it’s a badger’s toilet. They apparently dig their own latrine and use it for weeks on end, only there is no flush.

Henley’s fascination with this was so intense, we had to set up a night camera to capture the black and white beasts at work.

We can’t even park the car in the garage because of the swallows that are currently living in there, using our aging Volvo as a bog.

It’s not bad enough I still have one child in nappies – whose bowel movement I had to scrub off the inside of the bath the other day –  but the chickens regularly crimp one off in their water bowl and who knows who the tiny ‘code brown’ on top of the pushchair belonged to.

Right, on that note I’m going to clean off the sheep crap that’s caught in the grooves of my trainers from my cross country run yesterday!