I’ve got eyes on a porcupine. My dogs are leashed, luckily, but they are ever-so-interested. On the edge of the meadow, in the soft June twilight, we watch the porcupine munch red clover in the grass. Its quills rustle, making a soft clattering noise. My dogs’ noses are up. I can smell it, too — a musky, thick odor.
I wonder if Juni, my young dog, smells it as “pain.” A recent first encounter with a porcupine didn’t end well: she came back with a pincushion snout and a trip to the emergency vet, and I’m not about to see if she is one of those dogs that never learns. I’ve already had a dog like that — one who chased every porky like a champ but always ended up on the wrong side of the quill. Tonight, we turn tail and chalk up another win for the porcupine.
The North American porcupine has been “winning” for millions of years. Surviving relatively unchanged since before the last ice age, the clunky, chunky porcupine has outlasted saber-tooth tigers, dire wolves, and American lions. With 30,000 barbed quills ready to make its point, the porcupine is a masterclass in evolutionary success.
Quills are specialized, stiff, sharp hairs made from the same material as our own hair and fingernails — keratin. Spongy and hollow, they are flexible and lightweight, insulating the porcupine during our northern winters. Not just a warm winter cloak, quills are also a perfect personal flotation device, providing a light, buoyant covering when these prickly pigs take a swim.
Porcupines don’t immediately turn to quilling as a defense. They try to get their “Don’t mess with me” message across through a series of sensory cues. With growls and chattering their teeth, they make a ruckus. They also take a page from the skunk’s playbook and produce a stinky warning scent from skin glands located on their lower back. Along with the noxious odor, they bristle their highly visible, banded black-and-white quills. When attackers ignore these sound, scent, and visual warnings, then it’s up to the quills.
When threatened, the North American porcupine cannot shoot its quills. Instead, it raises its specialized fur through the same muscle action as when a dog raises its hackles. With erect quills, pointing out in all directions, it then turns its back on its attacker and uses the fast motion of its muscular tail to swipe at the threat. Once the quills make contact, the predator most often concedes defeat.
Anchored into the flesh, the barb-tipped quill resists being pulled out, similar to how a fishhook works. An embedded barb gets pulled deeper and deeper into the animal by the animal’s own muscle action. Like a dangerous dart, it might end up spearing a vital organ. But a mouthful of quills is even more likely to cause death by starvation for those wild animals, inexperienced or desperate enough to tangle with a “quill-pig. “
Coated with an antibiotic produced by the skin, each quill has a greasy covering of fatty acids and lipids that functions as a protection from bacterial infection.
This prevents porcupines from getting infections when they quill themselves or are quilled by others during mating season. As the quill enters the skin, its self-produced antibiotic coats the wound, keeping it free of most infections.
Mixed in with their quills is coarse brown fur, and in some specific spots, there is only fur and no quills at all, including their face, ears, belly, and the underside of their tails. Where there is a way, there is a predator.
The fisher, related to weasels and otters, is one of the only animals in New England capable of successfully hunting porcupines. Able to chase its pokey prey up trees, this 8- to 16-pound predator is a fast, agile tree climber. Once in the trees, the fisher snaps at the quill-less areas, such as its head, harassing the porcupine, until, as eyewitness accounts and fisher-killed porcupine autopsies suggest, the prickly pig becomes disoriented and falls. Once on the ground, either killed or injured, the fisher feeds beginning with the porcupine’s unprotected regions.
In nature, somebody is always somebody else’s lunch. For those dogs that aspire to be a fisher and dream of porcupine pie, a face full of quills awaits. Every season in New Hampshire has porcupines, along with the potential for your dog to come snout-to-barb with one of these animals.
Take precautions. Walk your dog on a leash in wooded and rural areas during dawn and dusk, when porcupines are typically more active. If your dog is quilled, do not try to remove them on your own. Instead, bring your best buddy to the vet and let the professionals take care of it. There, the animal care team will not only remove all visible quills but also thoroughly search your dog for any broken or embedded ones.
And keep your fingers crossed that you don’t have one of those dogs that never learns.
Naturalist and educator Susie Spikol is the author of “The Animal Adventurer’s Guide, Forest Magic for Kids,” and “The Book of Fairies.“ She is the Director of Community Program at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock.