Path of a Porcupine

In our meadow lives a porcupine, a lone creature that chews on bark and descends into a rock crevice when the sun is up. I know he eats bark because some of our trees are stripped bare at the top, looking pale and smooth, and his tracks in fresh snow have made the location of his home obvious. He enters his hovel, exits, sometimes slides down a hill, and from time to time crosses the road. The little feet tell a story.

Photo by E. Medline

Porcupines are mostly nocturnal, so I don’t see our rodent neighbour often. The last time I ran into him was a couple of months ago, when I had to stop my car suddenly and wait while he stood blinking in the headlights, unsure. Eventually he moved along, disappearing into the dark ditch.

 

I like that he eats our trees. His presence reminds us that our land is not our own. Likely he was here before us, as porcupines last relatively long. That’s not surprising, given the medieval defense mechanism with its classic cruelty and evolved elegance. Despite their keratin quills, porcupines do have a few predators. Fishers are the vicious ones, tossing the prickly beings on their backs to attack the soft belly. 

 

The porcupine’s resting breath warms the air above his humble tunnel. Lying there, he breathes in and out, next to hibernating groundhogs and iced-in frogs. He wakes at the gloaming and emerges. I want to follow, but don’t, fearing I will ruin his tracks, and disturb his calm wanderings.

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Notes to readers: Memorizing Nature has now been shortlisted for the juried Ninjamatics’ 2011 Canadian Weblog Awards in the nature category. Also, earlier I chose to black out this blog for 12 hours in solidarity with other WordPress bloggers and sites to protest proposed American legislation that would limit Internet freedom. It’s an important issue.