Fred Hanawalt – Noted Scatologist by Alan Borer
Can you define the word, “Scat?” Most commonly used to scare something away, often cats, “Scat” also is a word for ”jazz singing with nonsense syllables,” according to Merriam-Webster. Those of us who grew up in the Seventies will remember Scatman Crothers. But widespread use of “scat” might be inhibited by another definition. Scat is the proper name for feces, dung, excrement, droppings; it goes from there (and gets cruder with each passing synonym). I think by now you’ve figured it out. Every living organism on earth takes matter in and pushes waste out. That, my friends, is scat.
A professor at Otterbein, in the early twentieth century, was an expert scatologist. Fred Hanawalt (OU Class of 1914) was well known as a likeable man. The Sibyl yearbook from his graduating class described him: “Probably no man in Otterbein has more friends than Fred Hanawalt, our senior president. He is reserved, a hard worker, and makes nature study his hobby.”[i] That someone can be “reserved” and claim a large number of friends seems contradictory, but Hanawalt pulled it off.
An Otterbein lifer, Hanawalt was both a graduate of, and later on the faculty of, Otterbein. A respected teacher of biology, he was a widely published author in his field. One of his specialties was scatology. In a short scholarly article, “A Study in Scatology,” [ii] Hanawalt made a useful distinction, stating that the word “scat” is a collective noun while “skats” refer to the individual droppings.
Professor Hanawalt published a long running column in the Public Opinion on nature and its many subdivisions. His writings date back to at least 1922 with the appearance of Habits of the Common Mole, an article in the Ohio Journal of Science. If scat causes stomach to turn, listen to a young Hanawalt describe how moles eat worms:
I have found their [the moles] method of eating earthworms interesting. Small worms. . . are eaten entire. But larger worms. . . are torn to pieces with the claws. A mole may work several minutes upon a large worm, tearing it into strips and short sections, rolling it about with the front feet and the mouth….” shaking it free of the dirt in which the mole found its meal.[iii]
Hanawalt’s writings are, perhaps, not for the squeamish. If you study biology, you are bound to get your hands dirty and smell things you would rather not. Life may or may not be restricted to this little blue planet, but Fred Hanawalt, helped us learn about life in our corner of the world – yucky or not.
