Mystery Solved

The scat found turns out to be from coyotes! Yes, we have coyotes in SW Florida. One columnist for the Collier Citizen newspaper; Mark Strain, wrote about trapping two of them humanely and then releasing them. He lives not too far from us. Then, one day when both my husband and I came home after dark seperately, we both saw at least one of these really beautiful animals in our headlights. The one critter I spotted, walked right in front of my car and the headlights illuminated the entire animal. There was no doubt about what I had just seen.

Nice to have the mystery solved. Coyotes are not native to Florida. Dr. Martin Main, a noted wildlife researcher with the University of Florida is involved with learning more about this animal in Florida. For more information click this link: South Florida Coyote Study

Clue number two

Different critter or is this a variation in diet?

Evidence: specimen one

Sometimes when critters visit you may not get to see them, but they often leave evidence of their visit: scat. Trying to figure out what animal left the evidence is an area of study for some.

Guidebooks help.

This is the first clue in a mystery:

what critter visited our property recently?

Looks like this creature ate some berries! We have raccoons, grey squirrels, big cypress fox squirrels, skunk, oppossum and bear known to be in our part of Collier County. Could this scat be from one of them?