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Fast food restrooms have always harbored secrets waiting to be discovered. Fortunately, there are people whose entire job is to find these secrets. In a Taco Bell restroom near Minneapolis, 419 meters above sea level, geological researchers have discovered a small, delicate-looking coil of poo in the shape of a perfect four-leaf clover.

Katherine Houlihan, a scientist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, described the May 2 discovery on the NOAA website:

“As our small team of unfortunate interns were traversing yet another slab of porcelain covered in an unreasonably high amount of sediment, they came across a breathtaking new species. The appearance of this poo coil was unlike any published records and was the richest sample ever found for this element. We were only able to observe and record footage briefly before an obese disabled man thundered into the restroom and rained destruction down upon it, obliterating it forever.”
    
While most poo is shaped like unpeeled bananas or freshly baked cinnamon rolls, this newly discovered coil shape has never appeared naturally in nature. The new species has been named Houlihan, after the scientist who discovered it.

“That’s the truly remarkable thing about Houlihan,” said Houlihan, discussing the interesting piece of poop she found. “It’s perfectly symmetrical, as if it were carefully crafted by some higher power. I’ve tried to persuade the employees of Taco Bell to let us review their security camera footage so we can find its esteemed author, but they refused.”

Most people flush the toilet after dropping a deuce, which is why scientists mainly do research at Taco Bell restaurants, where no one has ever flushed a toilet. Yet with over 6,500 Taco Bells throughout the world, scientists simply don’t have the staff or funding to explore all of them. Literally millions of new species of poo coils could be just sitting there, waiting to be discovered.

“The world really is our chocolate oyster,” said Thomas Melbourne, the researcher who discovered Lexy, a Justin Bieber shaped species of poo coil he named after his stillborn daughter. “This endless expanse of unexplored Taco Bell restrooms are incredibly fascinating. We could research them for 100 years and never be finished. While we’ve only explored five percent of the ocean, a mere 0.23 percent of Taco Bell restrooms have been properly researched. It gives mounds of perspective. Life’s little problems don’t seem as big when you realize 99.77 percent of Secret Poop is undiscovered.”

Over the past six months, eight new coil shapes have been discovered in this single Taco Bell location. Researchers have declared the area a natural Poo Coil Reef. Three separate bills are floating around the Senate in hopes of protecting the location’s delicate ecosystem. The bills would fund additional research while adding penalties for those who illegally poach or damage the delicate Coil Reef.

This unusual subject of research has brought detractors. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) questioned why the cost of protecting a fast food toilet is so expensive.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but we are talking about pieces of shit here, right?” said Ryan. “Are we really going to spend millions preserving turd shapes? We should protect human beings instead by getting the scientists who smelt them to push the people who dealt them to see a doctor. For goodness sake, one of them is shaped like a marijuana leaf. That guy’s gotta be sore a lot.”

Houlihan says the majority of the requested $837.2 million will assist in creating research centers to house the gifted authors of protected poo coils. She warns that these Enhanced Individuals could be dangerous if their powerful gifts fall into the wrong hands.

“One coil we found was shaped like an AK-47 assault rifle. Imagine if a kid found that and it went off in his face,” said Houlihan. “It’s just really upsetting when a civilian who doesn’t understand the significance of the research dismisses an entire body of work as ‘pieces of shit.’”

Some in the political world, like Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), question whether the scientists’ discoveries are a hoax.

“Poop shaped like The Crucifixion?” said Graham. “I guess it must have been the guy who bought that grilled cheese sandwich that looked like Jesus. That turd was obviously planted. There’s nothing here that requires anything more than a minimum wage employee with a very powerful hose.”

Houlihan says unless we act fast, these beautiful works of nature - one shaped like Michaelangelo’s The Thinker sculpture, another like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Michelangelo’s nunchucks, and yet another shaped like a 1990 Dodge Daytona with flames painted on the side - may be lost forever.

“Sooner or later, someone at Taco Bell will start cleaning restrooms instead of letting them become decades-long testing grounds for explosive diarrhea. That will be a very sad day for science,” said Houlihan. “People think I’m full of shit, but I’m not. My hands are just covered in it. Especially since they released those Doritos tacos.”