Columnists, including me, feel a responsibility to keep you, the reader, updated on discoveries or phenomenon that might directly affect you.


The latest gem that piqued my interest was the announcement that Chinese scientists are encouraging paper mills to use panda poop to make paper. Right off the bat I thought, why not use the whole panda? But there would be the ‘cuddly factor’ to deal with, so I dropped it.

I’m guessing panda poop would be expensive. After all you can’t buy pandas by the pound and bamboo chow doesn’t come cheap (just try to buy some around here!) It could be made into maché … PPPM, and used to sculpt a more exclusive version of the now passé cowpie pen holder as a knick-knack for CEOs, or…

- How about business cards for fertilizer salesmen!
- Already scented flypaper?
- As liners for endangered birds’ cages!
- Or for the editorial page of the newspaper you don’t like.
- It could be used as napkins when you are serving chipped beef on toast.
- Or converted into tissue rolls for movie stars and royalty!

We in the livestock business have been working on manure recycling for years. Still the most common use is putting it back in the fields as fertilizer. But if Panda poop paper becomes a hit … how ‘bout Palomino poop paper, pork poop paper, poultry poop paper, paint horse, Peruvian paso, peccary, percheron, Pinzgauer, porpoise, panther, Pomeranian … whoops, I’m running adrift here, but you get the idea. Personalized items, recycled from your favorite beast.

Advertisement

Say you wanted to memorialize a dear pet. You could make placemats out of your beloved parrot; Polly poop paper. Or paper cups out of your aquarium scoopings … plecostomus, perch, or piranha.

Pocket pets … Prairie dog pellets – personally pulverized paper for plagiarists and pundits. Or political poop paper to print the Congressional Record on!

I admire the Chinese effort to invent Panda poop paper; after all, rice paper, pudding and a-roni have been successful. And on a personal note, I’m working on Cowboy Poet Paper. I don’t know how it’s going to go though, I’m having trouble developing a taste for bamboo! ANM