Showing posts with label porcupine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label porcupine. Show all posts

Saturday, May 14, 2011

It's definitely spring

This time of year you blink your eyes and the trees and shrubs go from gray and bare to full leaf out. Everywhere you look has lush shades of green. Everything else has a coating of the unnatural chartreuse shade of pollen. I spent most of the week doing field work....mostly turtle searches...mostly fruitless turtle searches.

While turtle searching, I had a bear sighting. I heard this noise that sounded sort of like someone dragging empty garbage cans on the ground. I crept closer to the noise expecting a human since I was close to someone's house. Instead I see a bear sliding down a tree in the woods and then take off running. I guess my coworkers had scared it up a tree and it came down when all seemed quiet.
A day or two later I spotted these two fawns separately in a field. My first fawns of the year and maybe they are twins. They tried their hardest to even further tuck themselves in as I got close.

Then I ended one long day with a story of a porcupine in a tree. Off I went and sure enough it was still snoozing up a tree. It did wake for a moment when enough people gathered but it quickly went to nap zone. It's good to finally see one alive. The dead one was just down the road so I'm hoping this one is smart enough and quick enough to avoid the same fate.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

RIP Porcy

I'm not one for stopping on the side of the road to inspect some roadkill, but this one was special. I usually try to avoid catching a glimpse of the mess. The animals I've seen hit and still partially alive throughout the years will forever haunt me, but this one caught my eye. I've never seen a live porcupine in or outside of NJ. I've seen its quills and I've seen other people's photos of them in NJ but I have never seen one. So I left the car running and jumped out for a quick peek. Poor thing was intact (thankfully) and didn't smell (also thankful). Then I drove for a minute or two and thought that I really wanted a pic. So I turned around, properly parked, and ran back with camera.

Which leads me to my new questions, how fast was porcy going when it was crossing the road? Seems weird that it would be intact...all internal injuries? How fast can they go on foot? Do they make noises? All new questions.