Down East Magazine - Maine Vacations, Real Estate, Lifestyles

• Email this page
• Print this page
• del.icio.us
• digg
• yahoo!
• Comments
• Feed

October 31, 2007

    I’ve been noticing a lot of dead porcupines along all the roads in the neighborhood this past month, this glorious long October. I thought at first it might be a distemper epidemic, the kind of thing that happens to raccoon populations from time to time — the sick animals get the shivers, lose their fear, their senses, seek out warm pavement at night, have a nap in the middle of the road (drunks do this too, from time to time). But distemper is a disease of meat-eaters, like dogs and raccoons. And the dead porcupines looked whole and healthy, no goopy eyes, no half-crazed animals tottering through the dooryard.

    Best answer I can come up with after a little study is that porcupines born last spring are now more or less full grown, and on the move, leaving their birth areas and birth clans, tottering along looking for empty or underpopulated niches, looking for winter dens (in hollow logs, in trees, in caves, in my lawn shack), and in the process crossing roads at night. They are solitary travelers, live and work mostly solitary (in this way, too, are writers porcupines) but may den up snuggly with other porcupines in winter: hey, ouch. They’ll wander far looking for ideal conditions. They like grasses, seeds, leaves, aquatic plants, but all that thins out in winter, when they eat bark, twigs, pine needles, the salty armpits of old t-shirts, gas-can nozzles, plywood. Like that other large rodent, the beaver, porcupines don’t hibernate, though they’ll stay home on bad nights. Like the beaver they are primarily nocturnal, but don’t mind the daylight.

    Anyway, a slow-poke porcupine’s only defense is to hold its ground, lift its tail full of quills, get its back up, its sides, present a prickly target (30,000 quills on a big animal!), even take a tail swipe at any attacker (they cannot shoot the quills), effective except against fishers and great horned owls, their main natural predators. Coyotes and wolves will take them, too, but I doubt more than once. The defensive posture is not effective against cars, perhaps their worst enemy in autumn. And autumn is good time of year to slow all the way down driving at night, because the deer are rutting, too, and the moose are on the move, and prickly drunken writers might be lying anywhere.

    My friend Liesel Litzenburger’s mom used to bring roadkill porcupines home, boil them for the quills, make projects with them after the native American manner, quills used almost as beads, softened in dyes and woven into leather goods, gorgeous. Or was that a character in one of Liesel’s stories who did that? Both, I think, actual mother and character. Liesel’s a good writer, which is why I can’t remember. She doesn’t drink, I know that.

    I’ve handled plenty of quills because of my late dog Wally, who felt compelled to take on small animals from skunks to snakes to cats to pecking swans and back again. The worst time was on a thaw day one January. I heard Wally yelp in the woods where we were skiing, didn’t get what was wrong with him till we got home. The vet said to get the quills out right away. But the vet was going out of town that minute. Wally was so tough, stoic, he’d whimper but not move at all as I worked with the pliers, pulling re-barbed quills from his nose, his paws, his gums, dumb beautiful dog. When I finished he stayed close beside me licking his chops, licking, licking, odd flicking movement of his tongue, gagging some, deep look in his eyes, imploring me. I kept checking, couldn’t find another quill, but he kept asking, wouldn’t leave my side. Finally, I dug around in his mouth, found a short one under his tongue. He let me pull it without a whimper, his eyes watering. After, I didn’t see him for a day.

    Once on Temple Stream — the dogs were young then, grew old, both dead now — I took a decision to ride down the rapids from the hairpin after the Russell Mill Road bridge to Eric Aplan’s house, site of the settler’s clover mill, pretty hairy water in a flood, always the possibility of trees down around each corner (and there are several corners), nowhere to get out. But I’d walked it the week before, seen no obstacles. Wally liked to ride behind me, Desi liked to ride in the bow, poised like a figurehead. Slightest distraction and they’d jump out simultaneously, good way to dump in a canoe. We splashed down the straight water, avoiding rocks, a really fast run, exhilarating, safe enough, Desi surveying the whitewater from the bow, Wally watching where we’d been. Ahead to port, I spotted a daylight porcupine getting a drink at the water’s edge, or maybe feeding on sweet weeds, or maybe contemplating crossing (porcupines are good swimmers, their hollow quills giving them superior flotation). I pictured both dogs leaping, the canoe flipping, myself swimming (or worse) among fast boulders, the dogs setting on the porcupine, a perfect storm in its own small way.

    I pointed starboard, shouted, “Boys,” which always alerted them, and both dogs looked to the right bank, nothing to see, looked back at me. We crashed past the porcupine, made the bend before the sharp scent reached the dogs’ keen noses. Which is when the dogs jumped, the canoe flipped, and I went in swimming. But our jaculiferous friend was safe, waddling up the hill unhurried to his place among the hemlocks.

Bill Roorbach's most recent book is Temple Stream (Dial/RandomHouse).  He lives in Farmington in an old farmhouse that he tries to keep standing. For more information or to contact him, go to billroorbach.com

Posted on Thursday, November 1, 2007 in Permalink