I first noticed the comment attached to our story, Where are they now: The Griswold Kids. The ninth comment reads:

I like to talk about stool.
Fecal McStool

It would have been easy to dismiss it as a troll, or spam, but something about it struck a chord. So I checked our comment archive, and realized this was not the first visit by Fecal. He (or she) had left the exact same comment three times before - on 18th October, 15th December and 22nd December. Hmmm, a serial commenter.

Was it the work of multiple spammers, or just the one? Luckily, according to the IP address for these comments, they were all posted from the same area of the country. It appears the McStools hail from Montana right here in the good ol US of A.

I then realized that the comments were attached to some of our most popular stories, and commented on days, sometimes weeks after initial posting. What's more, McStool seemed to follow trails - clicking links within our own stories, I found the classic comment again. Which leads me to believe Fecal is being directed to us from a link rather than being here as a regular reader. So I combed through our server logs, which contain referring sites, and finally tracked down the site that is sending Fecal our way - collegehumor.com.

Now, collegehumor is a pretty popular site, and contains hundreds of links every week. I couldn't believe that McStool was choosing only to come to YBNBY. I plugged “Fecal McStool” into Google.

Bingo. 179 hits, all from blogs, all with Fecal McStool leaving a single comment on them:

I like to talk about stool

And that's when I realized. This wasn't some crazy commenter - this was someone on a crusade, and we were honored by his or her presence, preaching the message of crap across the internet. I suspect many webmasters delete these comments thinking they're spam, but enough slip through to give us a sense of the scale of devotion.

The comments range throughout 2005, so I backtracked them all, trying to find the initial post - the origin - in an attempt to see if I could understand where this crazy journey began, what it was that tipped McStool over the edge into obsession. The earliest I could find was here on 26th April. There may be earlier ones, but even from this, we see this has been happening for at least 10 months.

Fecal leaves few clues to his own identity. When prompted for a location, he occasionally offers the whimsical “from Assbonistan”. Assbonistan, Montana no doubt. And if ever he leaves an email address, it's the fake “fecal@mcstool.com”. I checked whois - mcstool.com isn't even registered.

Or rather...... it wasn't :) But it is now. Check it out.

So now, a plea to all of you. We need to get the word out, we have to let Fecal know that Mcstool.com is calling to him. If you have a blog, spread the word.

McStool is out there somewhere - cold, alone, a small turd in the dark. Help us bring him home.