It was about a week and a half ago when I first saw the porcupine in my tree.  I wasn’t really sure what it was at first; I always pictured porcupines as spiky and aggressive but this animal looked almost fuzzy and was fast asleep.  Knowing that quills were hard to remove, I left the animal to do its own thing and figured it would leave after its cat nap.  It wasn’t until I saw the bark being eaten off the top of my pine trees that I realized the animal hadn’t actually left.  Or at least that was my first clue; my second clue (and the one that really stuck) was when I came home from work to find both of my dogs with long spikes sticking out of their noses; that was when I really got the hint.

After I spent the money (and it was a lot of money) to have the spines removed from my dog’s faces, I called in a professional trapper to catch and remove the porcupine from the tree.  The only problem was that when they came out, the porcupine had apparently vanished.  He was no longer sleeping in the pine trees like he was the first time I saw him and I had no idea where else he would be! While I talked to the main technician and explained to him what had happened, the second tech walked around the property searching for the missing animal.  Right as I reached the end of my story, she called out to us from our spot under the pine trees and ushered us to where she was.  As we moved towards the backyard, we too saw the sleeping animal.  Instead of the pine trees, this porcupine had made itself comfortable in the willow tree that sat at the edge of my property.

They then set and baited traps, hoping to catch the animal in the next couple of days, but apparently this porcupine was smarter than that.  He casually avoided all three of the traps and my sight for the next week.  Just as I was about to resign to living with a porcupine, I spotted him resting once again in the branches of the willow tree.  Within seconds I was on the phone with the trappers, I told them where he was and they hurried down, ready to catch the porcupine on the spot.  They pulled up and stepped out of their truck like the Ghost Busters; okay, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic but it sure seemed like a scene from a movie to me.  They moved quickly and quietly towards the porcupine in the tree.  In an instant, they had the animal on the ground and in a trap.  I couldn’t believe it! After two weeks of little success, they had solved the problem in the blink of an eye.  Even though it was their job to help me, it sure felt like they were superheroes that had just saved the day to me.