George the Pet Porcupine

It may sound a little hard to believe but we really did have a pet porcupine when I was a kid. We came around the corner one October night and saw a dead porcupine in the road. When we stopped to move it out of the way there were two five inch long newborns still alive. We took them home but only one survived to be nursed back to life and we raised him in a pen outside our back door.

As a baby we could easily handle the little fellow and the quills were more like fur that would lay down in a certain direction everywhere except the tail where the quills were smaller and came out at all angles and would stick even with the lightest touch. We never actually house trained the animal but we would bring him into the house regularly for extended play periods on the carpet and as he grew older the number of loose quills that came out during play increased but we never got poked too bad.

There came a time when George was full grown but still young enough to let us pick him up and he even went to school for show and tell. He had a good nature and would play with us on the floor running back and forth between us like a clumsy dog with bad, bad hair. He even went so far as to act playfully with the dog but as he got older his interactions became less playful and more unpredictable.

It finally got to the point where we could no longer pick him up, not so much because of the quills compared to his growling and scratching. By then it was no longer comfortable and we no longer felt like clever animal trainers without his co-operation. At night we could hear him whining and scratching to get out of his pen and the joy of Exotic pet ownership was gradually turning into the realization that we should probably let him go. It was late summer, we had him less than a year but it was clear that his domestic life was over so we deliberately left the cage open day and never saw him again.

Later on we went through a similar cycle with a coyote pup that my Dad brought home one night on his way back from teaching at the prison. That Coyote was a great pet for the first 6 months and then in less than a week he matured into a vicious creature who could not be contained and left on his own before the authorities could catch him. It was still painful to lose a friend and pet like that but after George we knew better than to get too invested. I don’t even remember the Coyote’s name, but I sure do remember wrestling with George before he turned into a wild animal.