The Porcupine

It's been ages since I used this blog, but a recent occurrence made me think it's perhaps a good idea to keep track of all the happenings on the plot, and hey, these mostly include my babies. So I want to try start logging all the funny things that happen to all of us, in our quest to save all animals on the planet. 

We've had ups and downs, good times and bad times, over the past few years. But this is one of the things that was really our first memory, or experience rather, on the plot. 

It was perhaps in the first month that we were here. And there was a hell of a lot of work to do around the place, as there still is. We also only had the three dogs and kitties at this stage. 

We were woken up by fierce barking, and of course, our first reaction was to think that someone was perhaps trying to break in. But, on listening, I realised that Bear didn't have his "person" bark on, he had his "yay, something to chase" bark going. I launched out the back door, onto the deck that was falling to pieces, with a piddly little torch, as we didn't own a decent one. 

I tried very hard to see between the slats in the deck, and spotted something black and white ... I then heard the rattling.

"It's a porcupine!" I shrieked to Pio, bolting back through the house to find my plakkies. I then charged around the outside of the house, to try prevent my precious boy from getting a face full of quills. I was in an utter panic, knowing very well how sore that would be for him. 

By the time I got there, he had followed it to near the kitchen steps. I chased him off, yelling at the top of my voice to get him away, while Pio watched from the deck. As Bear backed off, the porcupine stood and looked at me. 

They're surprisingly big, particularly with their quills up, and he was almost waist high on me. He didn't do much, just checked me out, then put his quills down, walked down the bank to the fence, and slipped through. Bear was interested, but thankfully, didn't try bite the poor thing on the bum. 

And, it would seem that Pio had forgotten to turn the fence back on after working on it earlier that day ...