Turd terrorism. What is it? Who does it? Why? Is it ever justified? These are recurring topics of discussion on PoopReport, and for good reason. The turd terrorist is the antithesis of the PoopReporter. While we PoopReporters strive to wrestle the mighty turd to Earth in the name of tranquility and civility, the turd terrorist works to harness the mystical power of the turd to destroy civilized society.

This is an epic struggle, colleagues, and to effectively combat our enemies, we would do well to understand them. This is why I believe this haunting exploration by Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer is required reading for the committed PoopReporter. What I've written below is a Reader's Digested version for the weak among us who can't read more than three hundred words without needing to rest. You stalwarts should go directly to the article [1].

Mr. Schutze delves into the motivations of Behrouz Nahidmobarekeh, the Texas cab driver who was sentenced last October to a five-year prison term for sprinkling his own dried feces on pastries at a local store [2]. Both repelled by and attracted to the story, Schutze suggests that "the doo-doo man occupies a horrible sweet spot in the collective Jungian fabric. He is the primal demon who pops out of the doughnut display at us all. The shit trickster."

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Mr. Schutze puts his finger on what acts of turd terrorism accomplish: "The whole thing undermines the hell out of my own confidence in modernity. If this is how it's going to be with the doughnuts, then I'd just as soon go back to a hunter-gatherer society."

Grasping for reasons against giving up on society, Mr. Schutze searches for the holy grail of turd terrorism: the motivation. He quickly rejects the argument the shit sprinkler offered in court, that he was playing a little joke to get back at the store for mistreatment. His quest led him from interviews with jurors and a friend of the terrorist to visits to the local library, where the shit sprinkler developed a reputation for defiling books.

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In the end, Mr. Schutze is left with more questions than answers, more distress than comfort. "He haunts me, because he is a man, a human being, not so far from me as I want to think. Closer and closer, as a matter of fact. He changes the basic equation. I can't even tell you what my favorite food used to be."

It is this reality -- that we can't spot the terrorists among us -- that makes us want to crawl back into the safety of our ancestral cave or to shoot first and ask questions later. And these are precisely the behaviors that terrorist acts are designed to produce. So have a doughnut, Mr. Schutze, as a sacrament to the inevitable victory of civilization.

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