Bear? That's the closest to human scat I've seen. A good sized bear leaves an impressive pile. Check for berry seeds in season. Hair in the scat could be bear but is more often fox or coyote. Bears rummage and turn things over, smaller critturs poke and pry. Large cats are rare in towns and cities. Bear scat tends to be squarish and canines and cats are more often tapered. Cats will usually scratch around their scat and cover it if they can. Probably more than you wanted to know ... :-)M

Critters don't do anything really detrimental. Oh no? The ones that dig up my critter-attracting stuff (if I have forgotten to cover it with cayenne, that is) then go on to eat my almost-ripe tomatoes. (By critter-attracting I mostly mean the stuff they say you shouldn't compost, like chipmunks and past-its-date chicken, but a big load of fruit will sometimes do it too.) Can't get much more detrimental than that in my book. I'll kill 'em for that. To keep the mid-sized guys out of my pile I use a bin, and weight down the edges with large rocks (otherwise they pull up the stakes). This wouldn't work with bears, but so far they haven't been to my yard. When the bears come I fear I will have to go back to putting kitchen scraps in the garbage.

About the only way to keep them out of where you do not want them is with good, tight fencing, that also goes undergound at least 1 foot and outward at least 1 foot. That doesn't always work either. Juvenile groundhogs are excellent climbers. I've been fighting groundhogs for years and I have a strong wire fence that goes 4 feet above ground and a foot below. And they still defeat it in various ways - see the attached link. They are territorial so if you can kill the ones near your garden you'll at least get a period of relief. When I've been able to find their burrow I've gassed them. You can also live-trap them, but where I live it's illegal to release them off your property so you have to kill them, although you might consider releasing them inside your garden just to see how they are getting in/out so you can plug that weakness. Here is a link that might be useful: Super Groundhog!

Probably racoons or skunks feeding on white grubs. Just fill in the holes and the grass will repair itself. People will suggest spraying your lawn to get rid of the grubs so that the skunks won't dig in your lawn, but there is no need to be spraying poisonous chemicals, just because the skunks are looking for a snack. The lawn will repair itself. Ian