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[pct-l] re: Tp and associated matters
Ron Vaughn wrote:
>My experience with seeing tp in the woods is that I usually see it in an
>area that is heavily used by people on short trips, or thru-hikers
>without much experience (like Georgia on the AT). The amount I saw was
>always not much, which led me to believe that when I saw it, it was the
>result of poor disposal techniques. I guess I've heard that animals
>will dig it up, but I've never seen it. Is the animal digging up tp a
>trail myth, or has someone actually seen this in action? What animal
>would dig up to in a six inch deep hole?
Yes, animals will dig it up. My experience was with a starving wolf digging up
my feces near my cabin, which did not have an outhouse; as I burned the toilet
paper in the woodstove, that was not there to be dug up. There are probably
many other reasons why an animal would dig up tp or feces, and I would expect
it to be normal behavior from such animals as coyotes, bears, wolves, etc., not
to include ravens, mice, etc. Of course, there are plenty of one-celled
animals at work here as well as worms and such. We humans have such a myopic
view of such matters.
>By the way, this proper disposal issue leads me to ask about the origins
>of guiardia. In the early 70s no one ever heard of water filters. Now
>they are required. Who or what happened?
I have always wondered myself how a creature that has been around for millions
of years (probably longer than us) could have suddenly sprung into the
limelight in the 1980's. Personally I blame the Reagan administration, the
emergence of MTV, the growing proliferation of personal computers and the first
"Aliens" movie (I wonder if the screenwriter had a bad case of giardia).
Alan
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