How animal poop becomes fancy coffee

In the five years that my guide Lambert has been harvesting civet droppings, he has never laid eyes on the beast. They’re nocturnal. Shy, he says. They can hear you coming a mile away.

But Lambert has learned a surprising amount about civets. From observing the way they poop, he knows that they are creatures of habit. He knows that civets start frequenting the coffee farm around November, when green coffee berries begin to ripen into bright red grape-sized fruits. He knows that they a pick a path to get there — one they will take for the next several months, leaving a predictable trail of poop in their wake.

Early in the season, civets eat other fruits and meat on the way to the coffee farm. Lambert admits in Tagalog, his third or fourth language, that the smell is “kadiri,” or disgusting. But after a couple of weeks, he says, when the civet has been munching almost exclusively on ripe coffee berries, the odor neutralizes, smelling more like dirt and dry leaves.