My name is Pricky Porcupine. My brothers and sisters and I are just over a year old so we consider ourselves to be young adults. We are like thieves and only move around at night. Farmer Bert does not like us at all because of the damage that we do in his lands. We love pumpkins and most of the root type of vegetables, especially potatoes. In our excitement at finding all these delicious goodies my brothers and sisters and I take a bite out of each one and obviously do a lot of damage.
We have on occasions been chased by his dogs, Bruno, Hardy and Rivet. Boy is this fun for us. There is nothing as stupid as a dog trying to catch a porcupine. Although we cannot run as fast as the dogs we have the protection of a covering over our bodies of long sharp barbed quills. As the dogs chase us and just as they get very close to us we stop dead in our tracks, fan the quills out which they run into. Some of these quills penetrate the dog’s bodies. At this stage there is much yelping and howling in pain from the dogs. They leave us immediately and run home to Farmer Bert.
Farmer Bert has been trying to catch and kill us for quite some time. At long last he eventually caught up with my brother Spikey and as he was reversing into our hole where we live underground he shot Spikey with his twelve gauge shotgun right through his mouth and out his rear end. All that was left of Spikey was his outer casing with all the quills sticking out of it. These quills proudly adorn Farmer Bert’s hat.
Next time you see a scruffy farmer with quills adorning his hat just spare a thought for Spikey Porcupine!!!!
Butch Hannan