The Porcupine Story

The Fear of the Unknown Monster Under the Car!

I thought maybe I would tell you a story about an experience we had in Montana involving a WILD AND POTENTIALLY VICIOUS ANIMAL WHO WE WERE SURE WOULD ATTACK ALL OF US IF GIVEN A CHANCE! Ooh, I am shaking already just remembering how our quality of life could have been permanently damaged.

Our little farm lay out in the prairies of Montana nestled between two 50K+ acre ranches. In other words, we were I S O L A T E D with no one to help us if we were to have an emergency. In fact, the nearest pit stop was six miles away and would close down at dusk along with the last crow of the rooster, and with the first howls of VERY WILD COYOTE critters. It was a dark and late 11:00 pm that unnerving night when we drove along our deserted, dark, and windy road to “Our Little House on the Prairie.” As we turned onto our long driveway, an ominous feeling stirred within my motherly-intuition-reserved-stomach section that something was terribly wrong…

We pulled up to our front deck and stopped the car. The front of the house had a deck that stretched the entire length of the house and had about ten steps leading up to it from the driveway. Inside the car slept our four children who were exhausted after a day spent shopping in the big city. My husband had forgot to leave the porch light on which meant he had to find his way in the darkness up to our front door. I would wait in the car until he got inside the house to flip on the deck light. Suddenly a scream spewed forth from his terrified SOUL!

“Linda, stay in the car! Something is sleeping on the front porch mat. I think it is a coyote or wolf or something.” Startled, I stayed inside the car as he stumbled down the steps and around the back of the house to enter in that way. As he was going in the back way, I just HAD to get out and look up over the deck. Sure enough there it was BIG, HAIRY, and SCARY. It had to be something rabid and fierce to be up on our deck like it was. Suddenly the front porch light flipped on. And there it was. I saw it in all its horror…

It was a bristly porcupine who apparently made it up our steps and couldn't find its way back down. Well, now I was really scared. PORCUPINES THROW QUILLS…OH MY STARS…NOW WHAT DO I DO? By this time my husband had gone out the back and around the far side of the house from this creature, and was peeking ever so inconspicuously through the deck boards at the monster his wife was now approaching!

“Dave, it is a porcupine,” I hollered to his barely visible peeking head to save his own life person. I grabbed a pair of boots sitting on the front deck and threw them at this dazed, potentially rabid, quill throwing monster who dared to sleep on MY deck where MY children may have been QUILLED to death! “Get off OUR deck,” I screamed as I clumsily tossed the boots at it. Up it lumbered and tried to run to the opposite side of the deck gaining speed until it finally crashed into the deck boards. Daddy the protector screamed and ducked. Not missing a beat it ran back towards me and I threw both boots at it again. “Git OUTTA here,” and then to the kids who were starting to remove their safe bodies out and into danger, “Get back in that car.” It is a porcupine and it will throw its quills at you. GET IN NOW!!” Screaming and now crying (from being awakened), they stuff themselves back in the car and slam the door shut.

This monstrous animal proceeded to smash into the front door end of the deck boards and then bounced backward onto the top of the stairs. He kept rolling until he was down the stairs…and then…UNDER THE CAR WHERE HE STAYED!

“Oh Lord, HELP ME, he is under the car and won’t come out”. I was trying to figure out how to get that dangerous animal out from under the car, when it just up and lumbered out, down the driveway, and on out to the fields. Quickly we RESCUED all four children from the car, ran up the stairs and into the house. We were all alive. Thank You God!

The next morning as we went out the front door to take the kids to the bus stop, a very amusing sight lay before our eyes. On the deck boards and all down the steps were many quills that had stuck in the boards as the poor animal tried in obvious terror to get away.

We soon found out that porcupines do not throw quills; you have to get stuck by them. And if we had kept our cool, we could have herded him calmly down the stairs thus saving him the trouble of having a very bad headache and a messy do for the coming day.