BLOG 6: Slow Down!

I cannot emphasize enough that I have NO intention of making this a dead critters blog replete with dead critter photographs. This is supposed to be places where we celebrate wildlife not lament its loss. I am going to make an exception just this on time, however. The reason is because this was so sad to me and the victim was so unusual…at least is was to me! I haven’t seen any of these around here at all!

I was travelling down rout 611 in the Poconos the other day near Tannersville when I saw this lifeless lump of prickers in the center lane.  I stopped the car and ran back to take a few pictures nearly ending up a casualty myself for my efforts!

Such a tragic way to present it to you, my friends, but here lays Erethizon dorsatum known to you and me as the Porcupine!

Now, to those of you who have these critters roaming everywhere around your home and gardens this is like a big “so what?” But for people like myself who have never even gotten within 5 feet of one (not to my knowledge anyway) this is quite an encounter (although I wish it were under very different circumstances)

Before this, the closest I ever got to one of these critters was this guy!

Any Pogo fans in the audience?  Huh? What?? OK…moving right along…

The porcupine’s generic name means “one who rises in anger.” This refers to the roughly 30,000 quills that cover its body and spring up, but do not shoot out, if it’s attacked or if an SUV decides to plow over it! They are solitary and active year round, resting in rock cavities by day or during periods of extremely cold weather. 

Pocono naturalist John Serrao describes them as “Our second largest rodent—up to 35 lbs” and he adds “They may stay up in [the same] tree for days.”  

Hey, what's  our first largest rodent? I'm assuming the beaver which can get to be over 60 lbs but that's just a guess. Anyone know?

Anyway, porcupines are strict vegetarians eating leaves, twigs, skunk cabbage (does that bother the skunks?) , clovers, conifer needles, apples and a variety of other greens including the inner bark of trees. They live 7-8 years unless they try to cross rout 611 in Pennsylvania where the speed limit isn’t enforced and people go as fast as they damn well please. 

They also are mad for salt apparently.  I came across this in John O. Whitaker, Jr.’s “Audubon Field Guide to North American Mammals,”  

“…the porcupine has a great appetite for wooden tool handles that have absorbed human perspiration through use.” 

That is absolutely fascinating and revolting! Oh lord I need a minute now…YECH!

OK…wow, that really skeeved me out! Do people still use that expression? Am I permanently stuck in the 80s?

OK, I'm over it! Now  here are some more interesting notes from Whitaker on porcupine warfare,

“If the [porcupine’s]  tail strikes the enemy, the loosely rooted quills detach easily and are driven forcefully into the victim, whose body heat causes the microscopic barblets on the end of the quill to expand and become ever more firmly embedded.” “Cutting the end of the hollow quill releases air pressure and allows it to be more easily withdrawn.”

Image from Dreamstime.com

YIKES! Remind me not to start any arguments with a porcupine!

Well that’s all I have for now.  I leave you with this short rhyme I scrawled  today over my morning cup of coffee. It’s a little rough in places but I think it gets its point across . . .  or its quill!

To The Forgotten

Will anybody eulogize

Our friends struck down each year?

The fox that met with cruel demise

Or the blithely prancing deer?

The lethargic crawling tortoise

Or the ill-fated raccoon

Lying now in rigor-mortis

‘Neeth the coldly glowing moon?

Will an epitaph be written?

To show we care and feel?

Are there flowers for these smitten,

Hapless victims of the wheel?

Creatures crushed upon our highways

As the fled to their abodes

Both the wild and the strays

Perish on our nation’s roads!

Armadillos and alley cats

And opossums and lost pups

And squirrels who are squashed out flat

And are never getting up!

Where’s the vigils of candlelight?

Where’s our calls to the divine,

To usher through the pearly gates

The woodchuck or porcupine?

For those souls who no one weeps for

For those sad, forsaken beasts

With this elegy let spirits soar

And may those fallen rest in peace.

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Thanks again for reading and check back sometime soon for my next blog! :)