Walked into the hay barn area this morning and saw this. Two glue boards disturbed and a pile of scat. Whatever is was ate a fresh mouse off a glue board (glue boards are checked 2x daily).
They tripped a rat trap too.
Anyone got a good clue what it might be? We have cats and possums around here, I’ve never seen a raccoon but I’m sure they’re in the area.
Live trap is already out, with a can of cat food in it.
Moved a glue board for a better size reference. Those are rat sized glue boards.
Oh excellent - a Monday morning scat ID! 
My quick search says cat or fox.
Not opossum, not raccoon.
This is a great resource - limited, but has real life size/shape references that are helpful! Who knew porcupine scat is the size and shape of Kraft Mac & Cheese
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.thinktrees.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Scat-Identification.pdf
Probably a cat then, since it had to scale an 8’ wall to poop where it did.
If it’s a kitty he/she can stay if fixed and learns to use a litter box instead of pooping on the floor. I don’t want cats, but if one insists, I’m good with it. I’ll pay to fix him/her and all that.
I opened the door and went “uh oh”. Cue panic mode, with seeing/hearing things that aren’t there.
Looks like fox poop to me.
If that’s cat poop, it’s a large cat.
I don’t know how a fox could get into this area. They would have to scale a roughly 8’ wall - not entirely out of the question though, I guess.
Here’s a picture of the wall that was scaled:
If you have snow, it’s easier to tell what’s around by the foot prints left behind. Cat is round, with no claws showing (retracted). Usually bobcat around here. Dog (coyote usually) is more elongated, with claws apparent in the print. If you don’t have snow, but do have some soft ground (like damp sand), see if you can get a print off that.
I’ll take a look when I get home, but the snow has that top layer of ice from being sun-blasted. If it’s a smaller/lighter critter it may not have broken through. Worth a closer examination when I have daylight!
A determined fox wouldn’t be stopped by that wall.
Cats generally make an effort to cover their scat.
One of my passerby barncats used the slight depression in front of a stall & would scratch the fines my barn is floored with to cover it.
My creepiest leftover was part of a shoulder joint. Section looked like scapula with about 8" lower limb.
Large enough to be deer, but looked to have been cut with a bonesaw at one end. Still some dried flesh on it, so maybe scavenged from trash?
Creepy because I found it inside my mini’s stall in the middle of Winter. 
Horses aren’t locked in, so mini was probably bunking with the horse when whatever predator did carry-in.
Creeped me out so much I threw it on my compost heap just outside my fenceline where barn meets attached arena.
When I went back the next morning to take a pic it was gone
So whatever brought it in to snack, had come back.
I have a lot of cats, and this does not strike me as cat poop.
Stuck to a glue board and then eaten, unable to flee, is a terribly cruel and torturous way to die.
Same thing could have happened to a mouse not fully dispatched in a snap trap, which happens about 25% of the time with every brand of snap trap I’ve tried. I’m not interested in turning this into a “poor mouse” discussion.
The glue boards are checked 2x a day, 4am and 4pm. Without dedicated cats, I need all the mouse catching power I can get. They can not live here. I have 9 bait stations across the property, probably 40 snap traps between the barn and house perimeter, and 6 glue traps in key areas in the barn. I catch 1 or 2 a week.
I would think that all the birds and mice that get killed by cats (a non-native invasive species) - played with before being killed, in fact - is a pretty horrible way to die. I don’t have cats on purpose, so don’t have to carry that on my conscience. /SARCASM
The floor is rubber conveyor belting. Do cats stress poop like dogs do? Is it possible the [animal in question] briefly panicked from having a paw stuck on the glue board?
Maybe?
No clue about cats stress pooping.
I’d think the glue board would have been dragged, but without being there anything’s likely.
Do you have a game cam?
Incoming vermin are just a Fact of having a barn in a rural - even semi-rural - area.
All you can do is secure all feed, set traps or poison & vax horses for rabies.
There’s a big sub-d here that borders a forest preserve where hunting is allowed.
Every now & then the citiots have conniptions when a wounded deer dies in a backyard.
Oh! The CHILDREN!!
Yeah, Shame on the hunter, but… 
Both glue boards are not where I had them staged. Their original location was in the corner behind the metal feed bins (immediately to the right, in the first scat picture), against each other in an L shape, with the rat trap right after that. Whatever it was pulled both traps out, and tripped the rat trap when it did it (but didn’t displace the rat trap, it was sprung in place).
The one with the fresh-dead mouse makes sense, but the other one was empty.
Assuming the live trap is empty when I get home, I plan to open the roll up door on the north end for the evening. Whatever you are, please leave.
ETA: I’m sure we have a game cam somewhere. Where that somewhere is… that’s the million dollar question.
Glue board: zero chance of death, 100% chance of terror
Snap trap: 75% chance of death, 25% chance of terror (according to your experience, I’ve only had to dispatch one rat not killed by a trap in 10 years, so that doesn’t seem universal)
One is more humane than the other.
By using glue traps, you’re literally drawing other wildlife, who hear that mouse screaming for hours and come to investigate. It’s the goat tied up for the t rex in Jurassic Park.
Cats don’t fear poop in a nice little pile. This looks like marking behavior. A fox is a good guess.
I’ve never heard a mouse scream in a glue trap. Maybe your mice are vocal, but mine are not?
My glue traps have a 100% chance of death. They are dispatched immediately when found, the trap disposed of and replaced with new. They are always found by sight, never by their screaming.
If it’s a fox, I’ll be stunned. I love foxes. I’m not sure if they can be nuisance wildlife though, outside of poultry issues. I’ll have to look into it. Thanks!
Of course mice vocalize when they’re trapped. Perhaps it’s too high for you to hear, but it’s definitely happening. And the wildlife around you sure can hear it.
Fox can carry mange. They can dig burrows in inconvenient spots. Fox habituated to people are at a much higher risk of getting shot or hit by cars.
I love fox. I love seeing them. I love seeing the babies. Like other wild animals, it’s not safe for them to be comfortable close up to people.
I can easily exclude a fox with mesh on the upper part of that wall to raise it to 10’, so if it is a fox that’s the most manageable one between the options (raccoon, possum, cat).
The true-blue climbers will be tricker but not impossible to exclude. I’ve got some ideas in mind, if needed.
Whatever animal it was, it went through blowing freezer strips and then scaled the wall. Pretty ballsy.
Yes, it’s amazing how “ballsy” a wild animal can be when they know an easy meal is available 
I’ll bet you 20 bucks it’s not a fox, it’s someone’s not-contained and not-welcome cat (again, a non-native invasive species…). But a fox would be cooler.
I’ll put the glue traps in boxes so that an errant animal doesn’t get a free meal, even with vocalizing mice. I don’t have many glue boards, so they will still be checked frequently. Problem (??) solved.
Now, for the devastation that cats cause, that’s a whole 'nother ball of wax.
They’re still terribly inhumane, but you don’t seem to care about that
It doesn’t really matter if the mouse that’s trapped on a glue board for hours is in a box. They’ll still vocalize, and that will still draw other animals to your barn. Putting the baaahing goat in a crate still attracts the t rex.
If you don’t want to draw other wildlife, ditch the glue boards. I get that you just don’t care that they’re so inhumane, since they inhumane to an animal that’s not “cute” and is inconvenient to you. But maybe you do care that they create an attraction to other, bigger wildlife. Or cats.
Depending on what type of bait you’re using, you’re also just drawing animals to consume something with a secondary poisoning risk. Also shitty.
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