The Mad Pooper

Cathy Budde says the defecations began in mid-July 2017, outside their house near the intersection of Briargate Boulevard and North Union Parkway in the northern end of Colorado Springs, Colorado.[4] As she later told local TV station KKTV, her children came in one day and told her "There's a lady taking a poop!"[1]

Budde was not sure they were serious, and went outside to see for herself. There she saw the woman, squatting, with her jogging shorts around her ankles. When Budde confronted the woman about having defecated in public and allowing the Budde children to see her private parts in the process, the woman said "Yeah ... sorry" and left after pulling up her shorts. Budde assumed she would return quickly to clean up the feces, and never again jog in the area due to the embarrassment the incident caused.[1]

Instead, the Buddes found feces at the same spot on the sidewalk at least once a week.[lower-alpha 1] Paper napkins and wipes the jogger had used to clean herself were often nearby. On three occasions Budde saw the woman defecate.[1] The Budde children began calling her "The Mad Pooper of Pine Creek" after a stream that flows through the neighborhood, sometimes used as its name.[4]

"This is intentional", Budde told The Washington Post. There are, she explained, several public toilets nearby the woman could use. There is one across the street, portable toilets in a nearby public park, and some at a gas station a short distance away. All would be easy for the jogger to use if she regularly had the need while running. Neighbors also told Budde they had seen the woman defecating in their back yards as well as near a local Walgreens drugstore.[1]

Budde notified the Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD), and made attempts on her own to end the jogger's defecations. She took pictures from the house, capturing a short brown-haired woman in a gray tank top and shorts. She put up a printed paper sign at the place near her house favored by the jogger, warning her that the police were aware of the situation, and asking her to stop.[1]

In response, Budde said, the woman began changing the times she jogged by. She also ignored the note's pleas, running by it 15 times in one day before defecating near it again, according to Budde. The police have said she could face charges of indecent exposure and public defecation were they to identify and arrest her,[1] charges that, in the event of a conviction, might require that she register as a sex offender.[6]

One officer, Lt. Howard Black, said he had never seen anything similar in his 35-year career in Colorado Springs. Like Budde, he admitted to the Post that it was amusing, but allowed for the possibility that the jogger might not be in full control of her actions. "If it's a mental health issue, she'll still be held accountable, but we would want to get her help."[1]

In September, almost two months after the jogger's defecations had begun, Budde went to KKTV, which reported on the story. Shortly afterwards, the Post wrote its article, and the story went viral.[7] Through its Twitter account, Procter & Gamble made an offer to the jogger: if she turned herself in to police, they would give her a year's supply of the company's Charmin toilet paper for free.[3]

Runner's World magazine ran a story with a headline asking the woman to stop. "[A]s runners, we understand having a sudden emergency now and then. But when it becomes a habit, you need to change up your regimen." it wrote, giving readers the phone number for the CSPD to call if they believed they knew who the Mad Pooper was. The article further urged readers who might similarly be using public places to defecate on their runs to likewise stop. "Pull up your pants, and take your business elsewhere. We do not know what else to say."[8]

Sports news website Deadspin called the CSPD about the case so frequently the department asked them to stop in early October since they had nothing new to report.[9] Since then, police report, the woman appears to have stopped. However, despite the increase in publicity around the case the woman has not been identified.[7]

Some news outlets went beyond reporting on the case to speculate as to what the reasons for the jogger's actions might be. Allison Feller, a writer for Women's Health, wondered if, like her, the Mad Pooper might be an avid runner who suffers from Crohn's disease, a bowel inflammation whose symptoms can sometimes include an inability to hold excrement long enough to reach a toilet. "[M]y first thought upon seeing this headline" she recalled, "was, 'Oh my god, being the subject of this story is my greatest fear.'"[11]

Sometimes her disease left her in such pain as to be unable to run or even leave the house, Feller wrote. But when it did, she would experience symptoms very suddenly. "[Crohn's] can strike when you least expect it. And when that happens, my intestines go from totally chill to totally explosive faster than you can even think about where the closest available restroom may be."[11]

Feller said she, too, took toilet paper and wipes with her every time she went for a run. "I don't run with these things because I'm planning to use them. I run with them because I've learned to be prepared." She recounted many times when, due to public bathrooms being closed or too distant for her to reach she had had to seclude herself behind trees or under bridges in order to defecate. One time, she admitted, she had even had to use her pants.[11]

"In an age where everyone is armed with a cell-phone camera, I am terrified of someone seeing me going to the bathroom in an unapproved place, then snapping a photo or video, and posting it for the world to see, LOL at, and comment on", Feller wrote. She felt considerable shame over the way her disease inconvenienced her, and called the idea of experiencing public shaming on the Internet because of it "paralyzing". She warned readers who might not understand that feeling that they should not shame someone they see experiencing similar distress while running. "[O]ne day, you, too, may eat a burrito that doesn't agree with your stomach, and you may find yourself in a non-bathroom bathroom situation."[11]

At Psychology Today, Dale Hartley, an associate professor of psychology at West Virginia University at Parkersburg, was dismissive of the idea that the Mad Pooper might suffer from an ailment that caused those problems, since she was so public in her defecations and had shown no sign of changing her routine to avoid having to do so. Nor did he think she had any psychosis, as she was "too put-together to be out of touch with reality" and kept to a regular schedule. "We would not expect to see consistently organized, predictable behaviors in someone who has undergone a psychotic break," Hartley wrote.[12]

It was more likely, Hartley presumed, that some lesser psychological issues led to her actions. "Is she an exhibitionist? I think this is closer to the truth", he wrote. But even if this was so, he believed, the jogger's real problem was impulse control disorder.

When they bare it all, exhibitionists have failed to control their impulse to reveal too much. The mad pooper's abnormal impulse may or may not be exhibitionism. She might instead feel an overwhelming urge to experience the sensation of a bowel movement out in the open air. Or to flaunt [sic] social rules, break the law, and get away with it (the same kind of thrill that a kleptomaniac gets). So whatever itch she's scratching, I'd put my money on an impulse control disorder as the milk in her magnesia.

Her choice of the same location for so many of her defecations, Hartley also speculated, may have been retaliation against the Buddes for having caught her in the act.[12]

• 2017 in the United States
• Crime in Colorado
• "Broadcast Wagstaff School News", a 2013 episode of the animated comedy series Bob's Burgers which featured a "Mad Pooper"
• Runner's diarrhea, which has led to runners defecating in public
• Bowel Movement Bandit