<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/porcupine-0130b-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
I don’t have many good photos of porcupines to help illustrate this narrative, largely because I don’t walk up to the Russian Olives on the east side of Antelope Island where they hang out during the winter months. It’s against park\u00a0regulations to leave the road and trails in that area but many photographers do it anyway. But several years ago I did find this porcupine along the causeway to the island and it cooperated for a few photos. That was the first and only time I’ve seen a porcupine along the causeway.<\/p>\n
Back in the mid-80’s I owned a home in Sugarhouse (an older\u00a0area of Salt\u00a0Lake City)\u00a0– one of those typical Craftsman style\u00a0Sugarhouse bungalows with a huge front porch. One September evening my\u00a0Springer Spaniel\u00a0Jake literally went uncharacteristically\u00a0crazy, barking at something on that porch. When I investigated I found the largest porcupine I’d ever seen (growing up in Montana I’d had many previous\u00a0experiences with porcupines) on top of part of my barbecue. Long story short –\u00a0I scooped\u00a0“him” up (I don’t really know the sex)\u00a0in a galvanized metal garbage can, put\u00a0him into the back of my camper shell-covered pickup bed\u00a0and went to bed, wondering the entire time what in the hell\u00a0I was going to do with him in the morning.<\/p>\n
By the time morning rolled around I’d\u00a0hatched a plan. I’d take him to class with me and use him\u00a0as a teaching tool in my\u00a0Biology and Utah Wildlife classes at South High School\u00a0and then call DWR and ask them where I should\u00a0release him (that almost didn’t happen because during the night he had tipped over the garbage can in the back of my pickup\u00a0and almost chewed his way out of my aluminum shell which resulted\u00a0in several hundred dollars in damages – they are rodents after all and rodents are big-time chewers).<\/p>\n
So that’s what I did. He was a\u00a0huge hit in my classes of course and DWR had recommended that I release him up nearby Red Butte Canyon but I’d never been there so I asked a\u00a0good friend for directions. That friend was Terry Tempest Williams who I worked with during summers at the\u00a0Utah Museum of Natural History. At the time Terry was the\u00a0Curator of Education at the\u00a0museum. The museum was on my way to the canyon so after school I visited her\u00a0office to get precise directions and she asked if she could come along. I was delighted to\u00a0have her company.<\/p>\n
We both had a wonderful experience releasing that porcupine!<\/p>\n
This was long before\u00a0Terry became\u00a0a highly\u00a0acclaimed\u00a0author and well-known environmental activist of course\u00a0(I’ll bet many of my readers have read some or even much of her work) and at the time she was writing an environmental column for the Deseret News called A Naturalist’s Notebook<\/em>. One weekend my uncle Dennis Christensen called\u00a0and told me that\u00a0Terry had written a column about our experience releasing the porcupine. I didn’t subscribe to the “Deserted News” as we called it because I preferred the Salt Lake Tribune for reasons many locals will likely understand so I hadn’t seen the article.<\/p>\n Below is a copy of that article. It’s of poor quality but it’s readable if you have the inclination to wade through it \u00a0(I really am getting\u00a0to a point here….).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Copyright Deseret News<\/em><\/p>\n Ok, here’s my point, finally.<\/p>\n In a comment on yesterday’s post blog follower\u00a0April Olson happened to mention that she lives at the\u00a0mouth of Red Butte Canyon and the creek runs right through her yard. She also said that “for years I had a porcupine eating my flowers. I still have a few spines it shed in my yard.” And later she said that porcupine visited her yard from 1989-93.<\/p>\n Well, that got my mind whirling. I wondered if it could have been the same porcupine that Terry and I released in the same canyon. After all, the average life span of porcupines in the wild is 5-7 years but they can live up to 30 years and in this area they’d likely be largely confined to\u00a0that relatively small\u00a0canyon for reasons of habitat. But I couldn’t remember what year\u00a0the porcupine showed up on my porch so that’s why I dug\u00a0up this old\u00a0article, to see if it included a date. It does – September 22, 1985 – only four years before April started to see her porcupine.<\/p>\n So it could have been\u00a0the same porkie. It seems reasonable to me that it\u00a0might have been. And 30+ years later April and I make this connection on my blog, become good\u00a0friends (we now know each other personally) and make this possible tenuous connection from long ago.<\/p>\n Maybe\u00a0that’s a reach, I dunno. But I love thinking about that small world\u00a0possibility. And I’ll admit it, I get the warm fuzzies from the thought that maybe, just maybe, Terry and I contributed to the longer life of a porcupine in the wild that surely would have turned out much differently if we hadn’t intervened.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n PS – A note about the porcupine smell that Terry mentions in her article and that was so very evident in my classroom all day long (and in the back of my pickup for days after). Our North American porcupine produces a strong odor when agitated or threatened. It comes from a patch of skin called the rosette on their lower back and has been described as similar to strong human body odor, goats or some strong-smelling cheeses. <\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/porcupine-article-by-ttw-in-deseret-news.jpg\")
<\/p>\n