I Was Raised to Hate Porcupines

Young porcupine at a rehabilitation center in Colorado.

 

When I was a boy, my dad was a US Forest Service district ranger. That meant he was in charge of a "district" within a national forest, a forest having usually four to six (or more) districts, depending on geography. He had a crew chief and a crew whose size varied seasonally, a half-time secretary, and a full-time assistant ranger (also with a college forestry degree). 

This is not my father, but it could be.

He was an old-school forester. Recreation, etc., was all very fine, and grazing was OK if regulated, but his job first and foremost was to grow trees, to mark timber sales, and to see that the loggers cut only what they were supposed to cut. 

At least once I heard him say, "I'm a tree farmer," probably while comparing his job to those "pressed pants" park rangers at the nearby national monuments.

And if he was a tree farmer, then porcupines were agricultural pests. As the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website says, "Several evenings of eating bark can severely damage a tree."

They damaged "the crop" by nibbling all around a pine tree, cutting the flow of nutrients.

When he saw a porcupine up in a tree, out came the .22 rifle or whatever he had. When I got to be old enough, he would pass the .22 rifle to me. Since I believed that "Dad knows best," I would sight in and start shooting until, eventually, whomp!

Not was 15 or 16 did I start to rethink porcupines' place in forest ecology. Maybe they did not all have to die, even if they "girdled" a pine tree, ate wires on a camper's car, or left their quills in a inquisitive dog's nose.

One time we were backpacking in the Lost Creek Wilderness (Pike National Forest) when he spotted an unusual light-phase porkie across a pond, fired a .22 revolver at it, and missed. I did not ask for a chance to shoot or volunteer to go after it. Maybe he felt my silent disapproval. That was the porcupine encounter that I had with him.

But when my dog Jack was "quilled" one time, he did share with me a useful trick. Don't just grasp the quills with pliers and pull them out. When you do that, the pliers squeeze the air inside the quill, forcing the barbs out and deeper into the dog's flesh. Instead, cut the quills' ends off with scissors, wire cutters, whatever and then pull. It's kinder to the dog.

Likewise, if he saw this "porcupette," he might even be moved by its juvenile cuteness. Porkies have only one offspring at a time, so they reproduce quite slowly. This one was seized this summer from a wildlife "hoarder" in Colorado Springs and brought to a rehabilitation center where it will spend the winter. 

Next spring, just to be on the safe side, I'll suggest releasing it in an area where no logging is going on.