We have a phantom pooper at my house.

And I don’t mean those lovely little packages your toddler or sweet pet leaves for you. We have totally had those. One of our cats used to have to be crated at night because otherwise he would poop in front of the back door every night and I was pregnant so the hell with cleaning that up.

I don’t have any very small people left in my house. I have two cats who are well outside-and-only-use-the-litter-box-during-the-winter trained.

My youngest is 5 and has been completely potty trained for a couple of years now. My middles are mostly out of over night diapers except when they are sick.

So my hubby and I were not expecting phantom poop.

You know that poop that happened in the toilet and for some godforsaken reason was never flushed down?

That one. It ends up getting under the toilet paper if someone else comes along and uses the toilet and like never actually looks in the bowl.

And it just sits there, not smelling so nice, and just mellowing and waiting for a grown up to come along and just hit flush.

And I know from the size of the snakes that it is not an adult who is doing it. I mean we all forget things sometimes, or get interrupted because mom’s pooping on the toilet it must be time for an emergency. Like. Right. Now.

No I am not talking about those times. This has become a pattern, but we can’t figure out which of the kids is doing it.

I suspect it may in fact be more than one.

The 5 year old usually makes me wipe her butt so I think it’s pretty safe to say it’s not her.

I have caught the 10 year old having left the poop in the bowl and she is a bit space cadet-y lately thanks to those lovely hormones that decided to show up already.

My eldest has been known to be the skiddie monster of her undies. Which has the added bonus of no one else being willing to wear her undies, and in a household of four girls I suspect that’s just a way to mark her territory.

And my 7 year old, it might be her. She’s pretty go lucky happy so it’s possible. Or not, it’s really hard to tell.

It tends to just be one bathroom too, the downstairs one. Which is currently off limits as we have week old ducks in a box on the floor right now because it is too cold to keep them in the basement and well the cats might think at their current size they would be yummy snacks.

So it will be interesting to see if the phantom pooper shows up now that we are down to one bathroom for the next could of weeks until we can move the heat lamp over the ducks higher and move them all into the bathtub.

I mean I know it could be so much worse. At least the poop is in the toilet right? No smeared on the walls or just squatting in the corner. I am grateful that days like that are behind us.

Which does beg the question why this is even happening because at 12-5 you would think they would all be good in the bathroom department right?

Everyone seems to have gotten over the being scared of the flushing toilet sound.

Or have they?

Maybe that’s the problem….

It’s too noisy?

Do you have a phantom pooper in your house? I’d love to hear about it if you do so that I know I am not the only one!