The Phantom Pooper

Poop: it's an all-too-frequent occurrence in our house. I'm all for regularity, but when I'm in charge of tidying up after others' regular bowels - namely those of Cameron, our dog Andy, and our cats Thurman and Ava - I wish somebody would get constipated once in a while. Seriously. Because the amount of turds I wipe, scoop, or pick up (not to mention smell, ugh) on a daily basis would probably qualify for some sort of record. I don't even want to think about how much baby Coby will contribute once he gets here. I'll have to start wearing head-to-toe rubber protective gear.

Anyway, Cameron took his regular run-of-the-mill morning dump at about 10 AM. Nothing special, nothing squishing wetly out of the diaper, no abnormally huge messes. Fast-forward to about an hour later, and I keep smelling poop - yet his diaper is still clean, and there's no sign of poo anywhere on him. But there's that unmistakable smell hanging in the air: faint enough so that I can't exactly tell where it's coming from, yet strong enough to be noticeable.

That's when I came across the weird spots. They began inexplicably in the middle of the hallway. Brown smudges, perfectly round, about five or six of them in a series of uniformly-sized-and-shaped dots spaced evenly apart. Describing it to Curtis, I said, "Picture if a Weeble hopped through a pile of poo and then across the carpet." For those of you unfamiliar with Weebles, here's a picture:

(I don't know why I thought of Weebles hopping through poo, it's just the image that came to mind. So anyway, picture the prints that such a thing would make.)

The poopy Weeble-prints led just inside the door of our bedroom, then ended as mysteriously as they began. Oh yeah, and there were two smaller, equally unexplainable smudges on Curtis's freshly laundered shirts which were laid out on the bed.

There's only one fitting acronym for this phenomenon: WTF?

To recap ...

- No overt piles of poop anywhere, just weird circular "poop-stamps" on the carpet and Curtis's shirts

- All the same size, shape, and distance apart; leading from mid-hallway into our bedroom

- The kids and animals were all free of any telltale poo smears

- I know I didn't do it, and Curtis was in bed at the time (not that either of us are usually responsible if there's fecal matter on the floor, but hey, there's a first time for everything)

So yeah ... I have no idea where the poop came from. All I know is that I had the pleasure of scrubbing it out of the carpet.

Any ideas, dirty detectives?