Tracking

At work today, a teacher sidled up to me quietly and said, “Uh, there’s something over there.”

“Huh?” I responded intelligently.

There’s something. Over there.”

I leaned over the circulation desk and squinted to where she was pointed. It looked to be a brown glob of something. My Spidey sense started tingling.

“Uh oh,” I said.

“Uh huh,” the teacher responded.

I walked around the counter and warily approached the UFO. It really wasn’t unidentified. I knew what it was; I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. I approached within a foot of it and leaned in a bit. It was brown. Round, but not perfectly spherical. Textured. Odorless, from my safe distance.

It was, quite simply, a turd. And glancing nearby, I saw another of its relatives just three feet away. Like Aragorn sniffing out Nazgul, I moved out of the library and into a nearby hallway. Sure enough, another unwanted friend.

I decided to cut my losses and end my investigation. Calling in custodial engineer reinforcements, I slid chairs over the leaked turds and then forced myself to stop thinking about the logistics of crap globules falling out of a person. The custodian confirmed a fecal matter sighting and set to work scooping it up and spraying the affected area.

Meanwhile, I went back to my office and held myself tightly, rocking and sobbing.