Scratch marks on patio furniture, food marks on bedding plants and vegetables, and animal droppings are sure signs of nocturnal visitors to your home garden. While some animals are very welcome, others should be driven away as quickly as possible - rats, for example, probably don't like being around. You can tell which animal caused the unwanted legacies by the colour, shape and size of the faeces. With this knowledge, you will eventually find effective antidotes.
Proper identification of animal feces
Now, identifying animal feces is not an exact science, because the nature of the feces depends largely on what the offender has recently eaten. Depending on whether the animal has eaten more fruit or more meat (many wild animals are essentially omnivores), the droppings vary greatly in color and texture. Nevertheless, there are some characteristics that provide a first clue to the polluter. Finally, other identifiers provide you with security. In the following list we describe the appearance of the respective faeces and provide you with further information on the specific cause.
Badger
Anyone who owns a garden near a sparsely wooded area sometimes has a European badger (Meles meles) as an animal lodger. Although the shy fellow will not necessarily make his burrow in your vegetable garden of all places, he will often look for food within a few kilometers of his home. The wild animal, which belongs to the marten family, is not very picky and eats plant-based food such as corn, tubers, roots, seeds, berries, fruit and grain as well as small animals, mainly earthworms, insects and small mammals. He finds all of this in abundance in a garden, although he does not disdain fallen fruit and kitchen waste disposed of on the compost.
Badgers are very clean animals and build veritable latrines in which they deposit their animal excrement. These are elongated, small burrows that are often hidden on or in a woody plantation. You can also recognize badger droppings by these characteristics:
- Consistency and color strongly dependent on the food
- can be sausage-shaped and dry or mushy
- often contains food residues, such as insects, fruit, grains or animal hair
- easily confused with fox droppings
- Differences: rough and uneven surface, cylindrical shape
squirrel
The red squirrel (Sciurus) can be found wherever there are trees and plenty of food. The small and nimble rodent feeds primarily on seeds and nuts, but also eats fruits and other plant parts as well as eggs and small animals. The animals are typical culture followers and don't even stop at a visit to a balcony. How to recognize squirrel droppings:
- can be placed practically anywhere
- usually of firm structure, rather dry
- small and cylindrical
- often contains food debris
- dark brown to black
- odorless
squirrel pup
hare
In the intensively used cultural landscape of Central Europe, the hare (Lepus europaeus), which has become rare, has only a few retreats. So it's no wonder that the shy long-eared bats occasionally go to gardens - here they find both safety from hungry predators and plenty of food. Here, however, not only the salad bed is in danger, but above all fruit trees - the rodents nibble on the bark of bushes and trees, especially in autumn and winter. The animal droppings are unmistakable:
- firm, quite evenly round poo
- up to two centimeters in diameter
- interspersed with coarse plant parts
- yellow to light brown in winter, darker in summer
Fox
The shy and cautious fox (Vulpes vulpes) avoids the proximity of people, but often cannot resist the overabundance of food in the gardens - intensely scented compost heaps, easily accessible garbage cans, fallen fruit and berry bushes attract the less fussy wild dogs. Gardens in the countryside are not the only ones affected by fox visits, as the animals also live in big cities. Fox excrement is easy to recognize due to certain characteristics, but should be disposed of immediately and, above all, never touched with bare skin: children and pets, for example, can easily become infected with the dangerous fox tapeworm via the excrement. You can recognize the animal droppings by this appearance:
- about two centimeters thick and up to ten centimeters long "sausage"
- the pointed end is typical
- black to gray color
- often contains food residues such as fruits and their seeds (cherry stones!) and hair
tip: Foxes like to deposit their droppings on slightly elevated places such as stones, bed edges or small mounds of earth.
Hedgehog
The nocturnal hedgehog (Erinaceidae) is a welcome guest in the garden, preferring to devour snails and other pests and instead leaving the vegetable beds and fruit bushes untouched. If this animal droppings show up, you have one of the prickly fellows at home. Feel free to make him comfortable, for example with a large pile of brushwood as a hiding place:
- do not form piles of faeces, but deposit them while running
- Faeces are spread over a larger area
- cylindrical with a pointed end
- black and shiny
- about three to four centimeters long and one centimeter thick
- often contains remains of food, especially insect shells, feathers or remains of fruit
Hedgehog in the home garden
tip: Since hedgehogs hibernate, freshly defecated hedgehog droppings during the cold season are always an indication of a hedgehog in need of help and food.
cat
Cats are popular pets, but especially in residential areas, many cats leave their foul-smelling feces in the neighbor's garden. Whether it's a freshly dug garden bed, the children's uncovered sandpit or the freshly planted tomatoes in the greenhouse: the approximately two centimeters thick, elongated and deep brown piles of excrement can be found practically everywhere. But be careful: Don't immediately suspect the neighbor's cat of being the culprit, because their faeces often look very similar to those of the marten. Quite a few disputes among neighbors could be avoided by a precise analysis of which animal is actually responsible for the dumped piles of excrement.
This is what distinguishes cat droppings from marten droppings:
- Cats bury their droppings in soft soil
- Martens defecate directly on the ground
- Cat droppings contain no visible vegetable food residues, such as fruit
However, no distinction can be made based on the smell, since the legacies of a marten also smell very strongly.
marten
Beech martens (Martes foina), sometimes called house martens for good reason, are small, nocturnal predators that like to set up homes and gardens to raise their young. With regard to their food, the predators are not particularly picky and eat both plant (especially fruits and berries) and animal (small mammals, birds, frogs, insects) food. This can also be seen in their animal droppings, which often contain visible remains such as fruit stones, pieces of fruit and nuts or hair. Martens do not distribute their faeces indiscriminately, but usually set up a toilet place. If this is cleaned, the animal looks for a new place for its legacies.
You can recognize marten droppings by these characteristics:
- sausage-shaped, up to ten centimeters long and two centimeters thick
- mostly spiral
- colored dark gray to black
- visible remains of food
- intense unpleasant odor
stone marten
rat
Apart from pet rats, which are popular as pets, probably nobody wants rats in the garden or even in the house: Depending on the species, the rodents, which are between eight and 30 centimeters long, transmit diseases, cause serious damage and, thanks to several litters a year, reproduce extremely quickly. Fresh, soft rat droppings are always a sign of a rat infestation, because you will hardly ever see these shy and intelligent animals in action. However, a rat's droppings can look very different depending on which species you have inhabited. Of the around 65 different species, the black rat (Rattus rattus) and the much larger brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) are the most common here.
Recognize rat droppings:
- one to two centimeters long
- elongated, slightly curved "sausages"
- narrow
- fresh droppings are brown and shiny
- old feces dry and black
- distributed over a larger area
tip: Mouse droppings look very similar to the excrement of a black rat, but are much smaller. So if you find faeces less than a centimeter long, it is most likely a mouse infestation.
Appearance of brown rat droppings
In contrast to black rats, brown rats do not scatter their droppings over a wide area, but deposit them in heaps on a surface. By the way, you can use the amount of faeces to estimate the strength of the rat group, because each rat puts down about 40 of these “sausages” every day. Brown rat droppings are usually dark brown to black, about two to three centimeters long and slightly thicker than black rat droppings. But be careful when assessing: young animals also produce smaller droppings and can therefore easily be confused with the black rat.
tip: A strong smell of ammonia also indicates an acute rat infestation - no matter what kind - because both the faeces and the urine of the animals give off this unpleasant smell.
deer
If your garden is near a forest, an occasional visit by shy deer is not excluded. The animals do not shy away from delicacies such as herbs, tender buds (they especially target rosebuds!) and shoots, as well as the bark of young trees and shrubs. Unfortunately, the animals quickly devastate a garden, since they always appear in larger groups (the experts speak of "leaps"). You can recognize a visit by the sometimes serious damage to your garden plants as well as by the animal droppings that are often left behind:
- very small "little balls", up to 14 millimeters long
- up to an inch wide
- colored dark brown to black
- deposited in larger heaps in summer
- rather cylindrical to spherical in winter
racoon
The nocturnal raccoon (Procyon lotor) has only been native to Europe since the middle of the 20th century and has now become a real nuisance in some areas. Such an animal likes to be close to humans, as it will find plenty of easily obtainable food in the contents of garbage cans, on compost heaps and in garden beds.
Raccoon droppings can easily be mistaken for the remains of a small dog, which is why you should not immediately blame the neighbor Fifi if you find anything suspicious. An essential distinguishing feature is the food leftovers that are usually contained, whereby hair is mainly found in it - a domesticated animal such as the dog, on the other hand, rarely eats mice and other small mammals. Raccoons are also very clean animals and deposit their excrement in latrine holes that are often elevated.
