Porcupine Commuter Rail

back and forth, back and forth

One of the first things that happened when we moved to this house 15 years ago was that my dogs Reilly and Seiji met a porcupine way out in the woods on a walk we were doing. We were together and they were orbiting me as I thought my thoughts and looked around, still not knowing anything about trees or what the Animal Map Overlay of this woods was like (dens, paths, seeps, berry and briar patches, hideouts and escape routes), and I heard them barking on a small hill. I went to go get them, and saw them gagging and pawing their faces and throats full of quills.

This is a good time to note that if dogs are barking, you need to go to them because there is something they are calling you in to support them with. Standing in place and yelling their names while they bark back “No, YOU come HERE! We need you! There’s a …. Thing!” shows them that you are clueless and no help at all in a pinch and they will give up on telling you and deal with things in ways you may not prefer. Forcing them to come back can put them at risk at worst, or just reinforce that your calls don’t mean that much. So go see what it is.

One of the porcupines the dogs and I have met over the years.

We were about three quarters of a mile from the house, and as this event is what caused me to always carry a pair of pliers in my pack, I didn't have those on me yet. So I leashed the poor dogs up (“Boss! It BURNS!!” I know, buddy, we can’t deal with this here though. “we had no idea! It was definitely not a rabbit.” Keep walking guys.) and made a call to the veterinarians office. They asked how bad it was “I’m their owner, so of course it’s horrible,” I said.

What I didn’t know is that the vets get porcupine calls all the time in spring and fall, so it wasn't that they didn't understand a porcupine quilling, to the contrary they were just weighing it against all the OTHER porcupine dogs they had to dequill. They were far less alarmed than I was. Each dog was seated and 25 - 30 quills pulled from each. Poor Seiji needed twice the anesthesia because he was having none of this and fought the sedation.

Nowadays, and three dog quillings later, patterns emerged and I noticed that all these episodes happened in April and May - not sparing me the cost of dequilling dogs on each of the holidays Easter and Memorial Day. In spring when porcupines have their young, called porcupettes (I did not make that name up, and they really are adorable with long black fur and the milky blue eyes of many newborn things. But… they also have hundreds of tiny white quills. We can talk about that in another post.), mother porcupines are much more often down on the ground in daytime tending to these little ones, who can’t climb till June.

So I learned to respect the Quiet Period in spring and we only hike on leash till the baby animals have grown up a bit. We do more training and take classes and step up our trialing events.

Last fall I was out with Matsu and saw his interest pique- ears up, tail high and quivering and off he shot ahead of me on trail. Of course it was something, and if you are going to call the dog, you had best do it when their brain is still thinking about it and they haven’t decided to surrender to their hind brain and punch it. Different dogs will have different windows of time where this is possible, and different dogs will toggle back to Front Brain more easily.

Matsu watches the porcupine. I realized when I calmed down that having him leashed while the porcupine is up in the tree, is missing the point. But I guess with porcupines, missing the point IS the point, after all.

Happily, Matsu is a woods wise and default-front-brain guy, who isn’t really Into danger and harm, and as I ran around the corner and up behind him to find him less than three feet behind a slowly ambling porcupine. I yelled “Aht! Leave it!” and he said something like “I already AM leaving it, see? I’m just LOOKING at it. Closely.” and I thought Wow, good boy, followed by, I can’t believe it isn’t slapping him in the face with that tail yet.

It could, but it didn’t. And I got up to Mats and put his slip lead on him and we watched it climb up the hemlock tree together while our adrenaline eased. It just sat up on a branch and looked back at us. Unworried. There was no need to haul Matsu away, or set us up in opposition along the leash. Watching the porcupine safely and quietly was okay. In a few minutes, the porcupine was clearly not doing anything exciting, so when Matsu began to sigh and sniff around, I went along with him and then let him off leash again to resume normalcy. I walked along, watching him ahead, and thinking Damn, this is the only dog I have had that I can call OFF a porcupine.

All those hemlock boughs on the ground tell me from plenty of distance that this is a favorite frequent and recently active feeding tree for porcupines.

In winter, the porcupine runways between their dens and their feeding trees (largely hemlocks) are super obvious. The paths are dirty near the den, and well worn with little yellow urine stains and the occasional shed off quill. If you follow the trail to the den, a hole in a rocky area usually, but sometimes a hole in a tree, there will be an outpouring of dry scats. If you follow the other way, you find a hemlock tree with lots of small boughs nipped off and tossed to the ground, or hung up in the branches and brambles of shorter saplings and bushes.

It’s very obvious in winter because these fed boughs are on top of the snow and recent. It reminds me that stuff in the woods doesn't just happen- there’s always animals eating things, breaking things, marking things, rolling and rubbing, watching and sheltering. Broken branches are good to examine.

The bough is clearly and freshly bitten off by the sharp incisors, not torn, not dead and just randomly fallen off . You can know things like this when you go look.

Snowshoeing, and knowing what to look for (the “sight picture” we call that, even though that’s a silly redundant term), I can spot feeding hemlocks before we run up on them, and of course because we walk in the same woods all the time, I know the patterns and places and am becoming a little bit privy to the Animal Map Overlay. I think Matsu has a more filled-in Map of this Overlay and he and I have about the same opinion slider settings when it comes to risks and curiosity, so I do consult him, and we have a relationship where he knows I consider his input valuable and that it’s worth talking to me in curiosity or crisis.

We continue to regularly walk this old ski path that weaves between several dens and feeding trees, but we do so in an informed way and with an understanding that he doesn’t go sticking his face into dens, and orbits closely. I can’t imagine recommending this trail to anyone else with dogs who don’t have Matsu’s experience and wisdom. But I also kindof like that nobody else would want to walk here among the Porcupine Palaces and we have it to ourselves

We walk these yellow trails, right across the porcupine commuter paths, threading between their dens and trees. And the dogs are fully aware of this and very good about sticking with me and avoiding foolish choices.

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