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THE PORCUPINE

Nobody loves the Porcupine and I’m afraid it is all his own fault. His back and tail are covered with sharp spines, or quills, the purpose of which I will tell you in a moment.¹ When he is left entirely alone the Porcupine is mild and inoffensive, attending strictly to his own affairs and never going out of his way to attack his neighbors. If one of them comes too close, however, he raises his quills, shoves himself backward and lashes his tail right and left with most unpleasant results.² The Porcupine has been known to inflict fatal injuries upon Pumas and Lynxes who were only looking for a bit of lunch. As the Porcupine makes fine eating, the other animals do not like his attitude.³ Professor Halstead recently achieved some success in teaching a Porcupine to relax. His subject had learned to keep his quills down when approached and seemed on the road to further improvement, then along came a big Grizzly Bear and spoiled the experiment. Professor Halstead is now checking his data to see where he went wrong. A Porcupine caught in infancy can be trained to follow his owner around like a Dog. This is nice for people who wish to be followed by Porcupines.⁴ In my opinion, relations between Porcupines and people will never be ideal because it would be impossible to give every Porcupine a course in good manners. They become furious if you merely poke them with a stick or try to pull out a few quills for souvenirs. The quills are covered with barbs and are extremely difficult to remove from one’s physique. Pet Porcupines like to climb into your lap for an afternoon snooze, a habit that may strike you as awfully sweet and cozy. Personally, I’d rather have my health. You will be happier in the long run if you avoid the Porcupine and all his works. Then the problem of how to extract the quills will not be likely to arise. I always say there are so many things to do in this world, why get involved with Porcupines? Porcupines do not have much fun, but some. Two Porcupines in a hollow tree are too many, as they are always rolling over suddenly and wounding anyone near them. The average Porcupine prefers to live alone and no wonder. He feels that another Porcupine wouldn’t be much to come home to.

1 The quills of the Old World Porcupine may be more than a foot in length. Those of the New World Porcupine are much shorter. They feel about the same.

2 The Brazilian Tree Porcupine curls his long prehensile tail around branches in a counter-clockwise direction. Spider Monkeys do it clockwise.

3 Porcupines do not shoot their quills from any distance, great or small. If one of my readers has been shot by a Porcupine, that’s different.

4 I once knew a man who had a pet Porcupine. Or, rather, I saw him once and I heard a good deal about him. I never even met him.