Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind by Warner Shedd

to the wife and broke the bad news to her. I’ve often wondered since then whether the farmer endeavored to pull the quills himself or had to call a veterinarian to tranquilize the beasts before extracting the porky’s darts. Knowing the tremendous strength of an upset cow, I’d bet on the latter.
    Porcupines are full of surprises. One of the most recent concerns their skill in tree climbing. Porkies have always been regarded as slow, awkward, but nonetheless very able climbers, since they spend much of their lives in trees. Lately, however, biologists have learned that it’s not uncommon for porcupines to fall out of trees and injure or even kill themselves!
    Possibly some of the porky’s arboreal difficulties stem from its somewhat unusual method of locomotion. Whereas most mammals grip a tree with their front feet and propel themselves with their hind legs, porcupines do exactly the opposite. As it holds the tree with five strong, sharp claws on each hind foot, a porky reaches up, one front foot at a time, sinks the four front claws into the bark, and hauls itself upward in hand-over-hand fashion. Descent reverses this mode, as the porcupine climbs down tailfirst.
    Now that the fisher has brought porcupine numbers down to a normal level, encounters with the clumsy rodents have become uncommon enough to be distinctly pleasurable under most circumstances. My most recent experience with a porky is a good example.
    While deer hunting in a few inches of fresh snow, I spotted suspicious-looking tracks some distance away. I hastened to investigate, and even before reaching the tracks, my nose told me that it belonged to a porcupine. Porkies tend to have a rather pungent odor, much of which stems from living in a den carpeted with porcupine dung, and the slight breeze wafted the telltale scent to my nostrils from a distance of several feet.
    The opportunity was irresistible, and I followed the broad trail, complete with tail-drag marks, for two or three hundred yards. There the trail ended at a hemlock of modest proportions. Gazing up into the tree, I searched and searched for the track maker, which, unless it had sprouted wings, was surely in the tree.
    Finally, after looking futilely for some time, I happened to glance at a spot far down the tree, where I was startled to see the porky on a branch barely above my reach. This was a wonderful chance to observe a porcupine at close range, so I stood there and watched.
    The porky seemed totally unfazed by my presence. It was nipping off the tips of hemlock twigs and masticating them in slow but purposeful fashion, and it seemed to have no intention of interrupting that useful activity. From time to time it paused for a few seconds to gaze incuriously at me with its dull shoe-button eyes—then resumed its munching.
    For quite some time I stood there, talking softly to the porky, which of course paid not the slightest attention to my meaningless sounds. Finally, with considerable reluctance, I went on my way, leaving the porcupine to continue its contented feeding. The experience brightened my day greatly, though it’s doubtful that it made any great impression on the porky.
    Although porcupines have often been regarded as intolerable nuisances, it hasn’t always been thus. For example, at one time—either by law or custom—it was considered bad form to kill a porcupine in areas of extensive, trackless forests. The theory behind this was that the porcupine was the only animal that a lost and unarmed person could easily kill for food in order to survive. In fact, a porcupine
is
easy to kill: a sharp blow on the end of the nose with a club or stout stick will dispatch one with ease. It’s unknown how many lost souls were actually saved from starvation in this fashion—probably very few—but the theory at least sounded good!
    Native Americans had an even better opinion of the porcupine, and held it in high esteem. In some of their legends, the porcupine is something of a hero,