Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
porcupine suddenly appeared, waddling unconcernedly toward the cows, which were some distance
away and still hadn't noticed their novel visitor.
I had no usable weapon in my car, and, fearful of the result if cows and porcupine came together, I
wheeled into the farm's dooryard and knocked on the farmhouse door. The young farm wife appeared,
and I hastily introduced myself and explained the impending disaster. She was quite properly suspicious
of me at first, but I finally convinced her that I was, in fact, a forester employed by the state.
Unfortunately, her husband and the hired help had gone off on some errand. I inquired if there was
a gun handy. She quickly found one, but didn't know where her husband kept the ammunition. I then
told her that, in a pinch, a stout club would do, and she finally located a baseball bat. Grabbing the bat,
I ran for the pasture.
Alas, all of this had taken time—too much time. When I reached the pasture, it was evident at a
glance that my worst fears had been realized. The cows were clustered around an extremely dead por-
cupine, trampled by the hooves of very large bovines, while the fleshy, bulbous noses of several of the
Holsteins were stuck full of innumerable quills!
I returned the baseball bat 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 porcu-
pines 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 loco-
motion. 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 dis-
tance of several feet.
