Essays

Wild On The Prairie: Mammals

Naturalists just want to have fun by porcupine following
July 28, 2010

There was an odd gray mass in one of the hackberry trees in the "pocket forest" of a local draw. A nest? A witch’s broom? The binoculars revealed a mound of long, coarse gray hairs – the back of a porcupine that was lying motionless along a limb of the hackberry. He sleepily raised his head, disclosing nose, cheeks and chin covered with short black hairs. His face was framed with a ruff of long hairs across his forehead and on the sides of his cheeks. He probably couldn't see us, since a porcupine's vision is not the best. He was not alarmed by our chatter, and soon went back to sleep. An hour later he was still lying in the same position.

Since porky was not alarmed, he kept his quills flattened beneath his heavy coat of guard hairs. The quills are about three inches long and are most numerous on the animal's tail and back. If attacked, a porcupine thrashes its tail from side to side.  Porcupines never attack. If cornered they erect their quills, turn their rump toward the source of danger and rapidly swing their barbed tail at the attacker. The quills are so loosely attached that they easily break off in the skin of the enemy. The quills may also become detached if the porcupine rolls on the ground and if the animal shakes itself after rolling. The poor dog which attempts to bite a porcupine soon has a face perforated by sharp quills. The porcupine cannot throw his quills, but anyone within reach of that sharply lashing tail might not agree with that.

The porcupine had not eaten any of the bark of the hackberry tree where he was enjoying a siesta, and we saw no evidence of bark being eaten from other trees in the draw. Bark is the food of last resort for porcupines. They seldom eat grass. In winter when there is no green vegetation, they turn to tree bark. They use their large chisel teeth to first remove the rough outer bark and then cut out as much of the tender inner bark as they need. In the summer they eat twigs and leaves of deciduous trees and shrubs as well as many wildflowers. While working in West Texas and southern New Mexico on the Biological Survey in the late 1890s the naturalist Vernon Bailey once had a tame porcupine that ate mesquite beans, Ephedra (Mormon tea) and saltbush.

The porcupine dines on a tasty morsel of watermelon

Porcupines wander a great deal, and their slow, waddling walk makes them common victims of vehicles. Since porcupines do most of their traveling and feeding at night, the only ones most people have seen were lying dead on the highway. Coyotes and mountain lions often kill porcupines, but their heads and legs suffer the consequences. There is one published report of a mountain lion that died as a result of seventeen imbedded porcupine quills. Some quills had penetrated its eyes and brain. Coyotes outwit porcupines by working in pairs and maneuvering the porcupine onto its back so the vulnerable parts are exposed.

Porcupines have a chunky body, small head, short legs and a stout tail. The fur under the quills is woolly and that his stomach is also woolly and without quills. Porcupines have feet like a bear, teeth like a beaver, claws like a badger, and inner fur like the wool on a sheep. But with all this, they are members of the rodent family. Unlike other rodents, porcupines have only one young a year, so there is little danger of a population explosion.

Campers in the west frequently report that porcupines become pests around the camp. This is apparently caused by porky's craving for salt. Anything which has been touched by human hands, such as the legs of cots, or wooden tent poles, has absorbed enough salt to attract a porcupine and our salt -impregnated food is nectar to a porcupine. One cabin owner solved the problem of porcupines chewing on his house in the woods by building a wooden platform and placing salt on it. Rain melted the salt, which seeped down through the wood. Thereafter the porcupines chewed the platform and never bothered the cabin.

In spite of their slow movements, porcupines are great gypsies. They are nocturnal animals and do their traveling at night. They are expert tree climbers and often spend the day sleeping in a fork of a tree. They seem to have an excellent sense of balance and can walk along a tree limb as well as a monkey.        

If you ever get the chance, follow a porcupine in the daytime. They will ignore you, if you stay 15 feet away.