Surviving Bear Island by Paul Greci Page B

wolves, killing to eat, like animals did.
    I looked at the porcupine again. So small, and I’d killed it. And that high-pitched sound, like a baby crying when the spear connected. I thought about my own neck, how horrible it’d be to get stabbed with a spear, but I needed to eat, just like the wolves.
    I decided to wait until morning to gut it, clean it, cook it and eat it. In the light. In the kitchen.
    I added wood to LF and RF and lay down on the life vests. The canker sores in my mouth ached, and my swan bite itched like a hundred mosquitos had nailed me right on that spot, but I was smiling.

    In the morning by the fire in my kitchen, I studied the speared porcupine. Couldn’t be much different from gutting a fish. Just slit open the belly and pull the insides out.
    With my foot I pushed the porcupine off the spear and turned it over, belly upwards. I slit the soft quill-less belly, reached into the opening and pulled out the guts, which felt like a giant handful of jello coated with glue, and smelled like cat food. Gross.
    I carried the guts to the bay, tossed them in, then stuck my hands in the water and rubbed them together. I pulled them out and shook them, then did the sniff test. They still smelled like cat-food so I scrubbed them more, this time with gravel.
    Back in the kitchen, I tried to cut into the animal but the quills kept getting in the way, poking me.
    I’d never heard of anyone eating a porcupine. Do you have to skin it? Too hard to skin with all those quills. Maybe I could just singe those suckers off?
    I jabbed the spear through the open belly and into its throat, then rolled the carcass over the fire, letting the flames burn the quills down to tiny nubs. I pulled it from the fire and scraped off the nubs with my knife. And that charred-skin smell sent my stomach dancing.
    After the fire burned down, I put some green alder on the coals and set the carcass on the alder. While it cooked, I gathered some firewood and got a drink from the creek.
    When it started to turn black, I knocked it off the fire and let it cool until I could pick it up without being burned.
    I gnawed on the ribs, ripping meat from the bones and then chewing. The porcupine meat proved to be as tough as fish was tender. Instead of easily falling off the bones like the salmon, it clung to them.
    So I chewed and chewed and chewed.
    And then I chewed some more.
    My jaw got tired. It tightened up. But I kept at it, ripping into the tough-as-leather meat, swallowing mouthful after mouthful.
    I picked the ribs and back clean, and then hung the carcass in a tree, saving the legs for later. I glanced at the carcass and thought, “later?” Yeah, it was only one more meal. I could actually work on my shelters and not worry about going hungry, at least for today.
    Porcupine by my shelter, its armor all intact.
    I was starving so I stabbed it, and it tried to stab me back.
    All its quills were quivering, as its life drained from its neck.
    I was sad and was happy. I’d eat it, every speck.
    My mom could’ve put my words to music. If I actually got to take guitar lessons I’d give it a try, if I could remember the words. The Salmon Song, the Porcupine Song—if I’d made more I’d already forgotten them.
    I piled spruce boughs on my bedroom roof until it was a dark green mound pushing out from the bank. The fog rolled in as I carried rocks up the beach and lined the base where the roof met the ground both insideand out, and dumped handfuls of beach gravel on top of the rocks to fill in the cracks to keep out the cold.
    And I thought about the creek full of salmon. I couldn’t turn my back on that. Maybe someone would come poking around back here. I mean, my dad couldn’t be the only one who wanted to get into the wilderness. Maybe I wouldn’t even have to go to the Sentinels.
    BEFORE THE ACCIDENT
    â€œBigger water out there,” Dad shouted. “Need a place to land. Maybe around the