Porcupine Adventures

The cute little porcupine WAS living under our deck and continued to do so for over a week. It would venture out every day and nibble on the bark of the various trees growing around the deck. It sampled the dried berries in the chokecherry tree, but seemed to prefer the bark of the plum as it kept going back there. It climbed up the Mountain Ash one time, but after looking at the huge clumps of berries, it climbed down again without sampling them and went back to my poor plum tree.

I was concerned not only about the damage to the trees and also the possible damage to the cats or the dog if they got close to it.  I really wanted to get rid of this little creature, but didn't want to harm it in the process. How was I going to persuade it to move on to a new location? The dog wasn't much help as she had learned the hard way not to get close to porcupines ( thankfully) and the porcupine just ignored her presence. It was only a matter of a foot or two for it to get from under the deck to some of these trees; easy to avoid the dog.

When I caught it red handed eating more of the bark off my plum tree, I tried shaking the plum tree to get it down. At first it ignored me, but then finally it slowly climbed down and, yes, headed through the snow, right back under the deck stairs again.

The next day I went to the hardware store in town looking for something called "Critter Ridder",  a product that smells like fox urine and is supposed to scare the porcupine into leaving. (Foxes are supposedly one of the only animals a porcupine is afraid of.) But the hardware store had none. One of the clerks at the store told me to try water the next time I saw the little critter in my trees. She said porcupines hate water.

Sure enough, the little guy was back in his / my favorite plum tree munching away when I got home so I decided to try the water treatment. I got a large bucket full of water and used a cup to throw the water on the porcupine. It just turned its back to me and raised it's hair and little quills, ready to do battle. After 2/3 of the water was gone out of the pail and the porcupine was still in the tree but dripping wet, I gave up on that idea. I went around the tree to its cute little face and tried yelling at it, but that had no effect either.

Later when I looked out the window, the porcupine was still in the exact same position and I wondered if it was frozen to the tree with all the water I had thrown at it!

I tried calling the county office to see if they had an animal trap I could borrow. Borrow? Nothing! They wanted a $50 deposit on a skunk cage, the only thing they had. But the guy at the other end of the line thought that if it was a small porcupine, the trap might work.  His concern was, though, how do we get it OUT of the trap?  Then he had a brilliant idea. Use a fishing net to catch it  as porcupines are rather slow moving. Then take it 1 or 2 miles away to a new location. He never did say how to get it OUT of the net once we found a new spot, though...

The other suggestion was to phone the Fish and Wildlife office and get them to lend us a scare cannon, something that sounds like a gun shot that goes off every few minutes. Couldn't quite see myself putting up with that under the deck for very long!  I would probably have to leave myself!

When my husband came home from work, he was not pleased to see that his efforts at protecting the plum trees with the wire fencing had not stopped the porcupine from climbing back up there.  It was still sitting in the same tree finishing off the rest of the bark. It must have been a tasty plum tree!  He shook the tree violently and used a spade to try and dislodge the little guy. He was hoping to scoop it up in the shovel and somehow shovel it down our long driveway, then across the road into the large stand of trees there. (Couldn't see this working even as well as the fishing net idea...)

The porcupine had other ideas! It finally got tired of hanging on for dear life, so it dropped to the snow below the tree, and QUICKLY (so much for them being slow moving,) dug a hole and disappeared.... under the deck stairs.   I think, though, that this last incident must have had an effect on it's porcupine brain, because the next day, it wasn't hanging around anymore.  I noticed tracks in the snow at the far end of the yard right by the tree line going off into the underbrush.  Either it is fed up with all the interruptions during its dinner hours, or quite full of plum bark and looking for a change in its diet.  Whatever the reason, I hope it find a comfortable home elsewhere with plenty of food in a safe environment.