Porchupine!

 

So I get a call this morning from my neighbor Brent. “What’re you doing?” “Working on Monster Hunter Legion. Why?”  “Because I’ve got a porcupine on my deck and it won’t leave.”

Okay, that I had to see.

Don't laugh. The Crocodile Hunter got killed by a stingray, and you can pet those at the acquarium...

This guy just didn’t want to get off the porch. And man, he could chuck quills way far. When Brent poked him with a shovel handle, he embedded a quill into the wood. It was like holy crap in there too. Moral of this story, don’t cuddle a porcupine. 

I wasn’t sure if you were allowed to shoot porcupines, so we called and asked DNR. Yes. You can. Okay, good to know if he then went into a berserker quill flinging rampage of death.  So just in case I brought a suppressed .223, because won’t somebody think of the safety of the children! (and their hearing!)

But luckily, we squirted him with a hose for awhile and he finally got tired and scurried away to live under Brent’s basketball hoop. There was no quill flinging death rampage. They’re funny looking when they run with all their quills stuck up. I wish I would’ve got an action shot on my phone, but I had my left hand on the hose and my right on my .45. (Quill flinging death rampage possibilites, remember?)

I hear the new iPhone is going to have a single button for photos now instead of booting up a menu. I’m going to have to get one for future Yard Moose and Porchupine action shots.

Okay, now back to work! These novels don’t write themselves.

The New Tone

42 thoughts on “Porchupine!”

    1. Scott I was just going to say the exact same thing

      I forsee Earl having a run in with a realy big mean one. (transformed and sane) and I can see Owen or Julie trying NOT to giggle and Holly just about peeing herself.

    1. They just swing their tails around and quils come flying out. Not a lot of velocity because they aren’t real heavy, but man, that little bugger was strong!

  1. Porcupines are considered pretty good wilderness survival food; they’re slow enough that almost anyone with a stick has an almost ready to cook meal. Some folks consider it bad luck to kill one for that reason. I helped eat one once. It’s been 38 years and I’ve never gone back for seconds.

  2. I can foresee a Correia scenario in which a porcupine is splattered with zombie guts, which get all over the quills, and then the little bugger runs off and infects an entire town’s population of dogs with zombie fever, and then MHI has to come and kill all the zombie dogs, and then PETA and the SPCA…

    But I’ll let Larry write it.

  3. Try a few rabid Raccoons in an enclosed area…like an attic. And no where to go cause they got between you and freedom.
    Can you say,’Scream like hell and while grabbing your Frost Cutlery 5 1/2″ Folding Short Sword’ while scrambling for better position to grab your cell phone and calling 911?
    Happened to a fellow coworker. I was working downstairs and heard the screams. I distracted the little bastards and persuaded them to exit the attic toward the hole in the soffet. They went up and into an old tree nearby. My buddy was unharmed, but his shorts sure needed changing. Hot attic, full shorts. Not pretty.

    True story.

  4. And by the way, “Quill Flinging Death Rampage” would make a great name for a metal band. That one’s on me, Dave Barry. Call me. ;^)
    (props to divemedic)

  5. “So at that point Pitt beat the ghoul to death with the porcupine?”

    “Well, he wasn’t exactly beating the ghoul, it was more like by that point he couldn’t let go of the porcupine so he just started wailing on it…”

    “But why. Did he pick. The porcupine up?

    “Well…”

    1. “Did you forget who we’re talking about?”
      “Okay, yes, it’s Pitt. I got that. But….why….?”

      1. “Well, Holly finally asked him and…”
        “What did he say?”
        (deep breath) “AAAAAAAAGH! GET IT OFF! FUCKFUCKFUCK!”
        “You didn’t have to scream, man.”
        “i wanted you to get the effect. Anyway, then Holly gets a ‘tude about his language and…”

      2. “… at that point all the shouting has caught the attention of the ghoul. So, the ghoul comes slavering towards us, Holly drew her gun, but Pitt’s shouting at her not to shoot while dancing around like a madman, swinging his arms and trying to shake the porcupine off. At this point, the little bugger has locked it’s claws around his wrist and appears to be having a grand old time!”

        “Didn’t Pitt see the ghoul?”

        “Naw. It was coming up behind him and I think he thought Holly meant to shoot the porcupine off his arm. So, Holly’s standing there with this puzzled expression on her face when Pitt’s flailing accidentally gives the ghoul a face full of porcupine…”

      3. “Which of course won’t kill a ghoul…”

        “No, but it damn sure gets its attention. So anyway, you got Pitt on one end of the porcupine and the ghoul on the other and they’re both screaming and swinging around so much the rest of the pack just panics and scatters…”

        “That’s gonna make for a long night.”

        “Tell me about it. Anyway, at that point enough quills come loose that the ghoul yanks free, but that just torques Pitt clean around and Smack! right back into the ghoul’s face again…”

  6. Porcupine quills are way too light to even have enough inertia to be flung free when they try to whack enemie with their tails.

    Also, while I know many people love killing them because they gnaw things, I always felt it was wasteful and needless. They crave salt and are damn near blind and harmless.

    And many a time I’ve been the poor bastard sent under the porch to evict one with a broomstick. They do eventually get the idea and waddle off.

  7. They can be rough on car tires. No, not that way. They gnaw, or used to gnaw, on tires in winter to get the road salt if you parked outdoors overnight in areas where you had both salted roads and porcupines. “Bang!” flat tire and very startled porcupine.

  8. Wereporcupine? You spontaneously grow blind, fat, bowlegged, and wild-haired, with an insatiable craving for sweat?

  9. Fair warning: the tips of those quills are sharper than you might believe, and they hurt- bad- going in. And hurt worse when you pull them out.

    No, didn’t get crosswise of one: ex-wife wanted to try doing some quill embroidery and I traded for a couple of skins, and while working on the things got stuck a couple of times.

  10. All this said, I actually used to work somewhere where they had a baby porcupine that good-natured and sweet. His favorite thing used to be to cling to a leather glove and go for “rides”. You could even pet him: just VERY carefully.

    1. It would be amusing to see a time-lapse of that particular wiki page’s traffic both before and after you posted that.

  11. Really? You are laughing about killing a harmless animal? You could have just left the porch, and it would have been gone by the next day. You are seriously that heartless? I really didn’t quite get how seriously you undervalue life.

      1. Martine is an idiot that likes to post liberal squeeling whinefests on my blog about how I’m an anti-government, murderous, well-armed, Tea Party bully. I haven’t blocked her as spam yet, because usually her posts do more to illustrate my points about the other side than anything I can say myself.

        Let’s see. I had a gun because I was PREPARED to shoot a wild animal, in the meantime, we did everything we could to not shoot the animal, including calling the applicable law enforcement folks to make sure we were in accordance with the law…

        However, according to Martine, my friend should have just let the wild animal stay on his porch as long as it wanted, even though he’s got toddlers and other curious children, and a dog that has already gotten a mouth full of porcupine quills once before. Martine illustrates the typical liberal mindset on all such matters of “perhaps if we’re nice they’ll go away”. This is similar to thier response to criminals, terrorists, aggresive foreign powers, and yard moose.

        As far as me devaluing life, if you ate a hamburger between 1985 and 1993, odds are I killed it for you. Yes. You are welcome.

        Strangely enough, the only people that truly appreciate life are the ones that are prepared to take it. People like Martine talk a big game about compassion, but have no understanding of where their food comes (or in other posts, how she is able to live in a free country), and then she gets all preachy and self righteous on those of us that have had blood up to our elbows, because she conveniently doesn’t have to.

    1. @ Martine – I am Brent – this was my back deck and I was NOT about to let my 3 yo daughter outside with this wild animal out. My 3 children couldn’t play outside, I couldn’t use my BBQ grill and my dog couldn’t go outside to releive herself because a stupid porcupine was blocking the way. I was going to kill it – Larry is the one who stopped me and got me to back down. I live in the woods and must accept the fact that if I don’t stand my ground to animals they wil overrun me. I don’t hunt, or chase down things to kill but I will remove them if they need to be removed from my property. I also did not want another $250 vet bill to remove quills from my dogs face again, or another $400 surgury on my dog to remove an imbedded quill. We used a water hose – yes, WATER (sorry for the waste) to teach this animal that my home is not a safe place. Hopefully it will remember the experience and live a long happy life away from me and my family.

      After it left I picked up as many quills off the ground as could find. My dog still found some, I’ve now pulled 2 from her mouth, one was lodged 5/8″ into her tongue! I appreciate wildlife but continue to protect my family from nuisance animals. Take a moment to see pictures I took of this porcupine, the quill that was removed from my dogs tongue and other animals that I’ve photographed and appreciated. If you following this link and visit my Flikr page you will see photographs of fish I have caught – they were all released after the pictures were taken: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40559761@N07/?saved=1

  12. As a liberal, I must defend my name: I think your handling of the porcupine was just fine, fire arms used responsibly are a good idea, and people should be responsible for the consequences of their actions. Oh yes, I have killed my own food in the past and probably will do so in the future. (I won’t use a firearm only because I am not a good enough shot.) Just saying…

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