Animal poop identification chart: whose droppings are in your yard?

Backyard animal droppings compared

This chart covers animals that can show up in a Southern California yard. Measurements come from university extension and wildlife agency pages, and where a source gave no number, the chart says so instead of guessing. Wild animals vary a lot with diet, so use the chart to narrow things down, not as a lab result.

How to read the clues

Size misleads more than people expect. In the chart, coyote and bobcat scat both top out at 4 inches long and 3/4 inch wide, so a ruler alone won't separate them. The contents and the location do more of the work.

Hair and bone point to a meat eater such as a coyote, fox or bobcat. Seeds and fruit point to coyotes, foxes and raccoons. Small, hard pellets with no meat in them usually mean a plant eater like a rabbit or deer.

Where the droppings sit matters too. Foxes leave scat on prominent objects like rocks and stumps. Coyotes leave it along trails. Raccoons go back to the same latrine.

Dog poop or wild animal poop?

Healthy dog stool is medium brown, smooth and log-shaped to somewhat segmented, according to Hill's Pet Nutrition. If what you found is uniform and looks like that, it's probably a neighbor's dog or your own.

Visible hair, bone fragments or seeds in a large tubular dropping suggest a coyote instead. If you want to know how much a dog actually leaves behind, see how much poop a dog produces.

Raccoon droppings need extra care

Raccoons use latrines, which are spots where they defecate again and again. The CDC says people can get raccoon roundworm by swallowing infectious eggs, usually by accident, and children are most at risk because they're more likely to put dirt or animal waste in their mouths.

A study of 215 raccoon latrines in three Northern California communities found roundworm eggs in 44% to 53% of them, and potentially infective eggs in 16% to 32%. Those communities were Pacific Grove, Carmel and San Jose, not the Temecula area, but the finding shows that latrines near homes are a real exposure.

The CDC says the eggs take 2 to 4 weeks in the environment to become infectious, so removing a latrine promptly helps. Remove the feces and soiled material carefully, avoid getting it on your hands and clothes, and wash your hands after working outdoors.

Rodent droppings in the yard

Rat and mouse droppings are small and cylindrical, from 1/8 inch for mice up to about an inch for Norway rats. Droppings near pet food, trash cans or a dog bowl are a sign rodents are feeding there. Uneaten dog waste can be a food source too, which is covered in does dog poop attract rats.

What to do once you've identified it

Wild animal droppings in the yard are usually a signal to remove what's drawing them: pet food left outside, open trash, fallen fruit. Clean up with gloves and wash your hands afterward.

Your own dog's waste is the part you control. The Companion Animal Parasite Council advises removing feces from the yard daily, because roundworm eggs are hardy and can stay infective for years. If keeping up with that is the hard part, a weekly dog waste removal plan handles it for you in Temecula, Murrieta, Menifee and the rest of our service area.

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