"Oh, no, honey, I'd never ask you to handle humanure," I reassured Mark when we came to the final stages of negotiation for our composting toilet.  I could tell he was seething over the term "humanure" (which he considers sneaky), so I went on.  "The system I'm thinking of is designed so you don't touch the human waste until it's had at least one solid year to compost.  It's really totally safe!"

With some grumbling, Mark gave in and let me have the composting toilet I'd been campaigning for.  So I expected some snide remarks when I came to him on Friday for help revising a flaw in the system.  The spaces between the wooden slats (which Mark had said were too far apart, but which I'd said needed distance for air flow) had allowed a raccoon to reach in and pull out some half-rotted chicken entrails, along with toilet paper and, um, humanure.

There was no "I told you so," but only because Mark is a true gentleman (and a long-suffering husband).  I scooped up the debris to stuff back into the composting chamber while Mark screwed hardware cloth over the offending holes.

Word to the wise --- lots of carbon isn't sufficient to keep vermin out of your composting toilet chamber if you live out in the wilds.  The author of The Humanure Handbook doesn't mention this problem even though he threw all of his household food scraps down the hole, but I think he also lived in suburbia where pesky racoons are probably much less common.

One pest-control option would be to line the entire chamber with hardware cloth, but that might rust into a mess in a few years.  Another option would be to use more, smaller boards spaced closer together for the slats so you have just as much air flow but less space between each board.  We'll wait and see if filling in the most problematic holes with hardware cloth is sufficient, and I may go back to plan B, which keeps anything food-like out of the compost chamber.  I'll keep you posted.