A story about a porcupine

One early morning a week or so ago, I was sitting down reading a newspaper on-line when I heard the horn of a truck blasting over and over again in front of my house.  I tried to ignore it but the horn kept blasting at regular intervals.  Feeling somewhat impatient, I got up and went to the window where I observed a huge white truck (one of those which goes by early each weekday morning to bring the mail to all the village post offices along the coast).  It was stopped and a young porcupine was wandering on the road seemingly oblivious to the noise being made by the truckdriver.

All of a sudden, the porcupine decided to move to the next lane, allowing the truck driver to resume his journey which he didn't do immediately.  But, BUT, the porcupine now moved right into the path of another truck coming from the opposite direction.  Oh, I thought, it's going to be game over.  But, no, that driver also stopped, and began blaring his horn.  Now we have two immobilized trucks on the road in front of my house.

There was a slow solitary dance on the road, the porcupine moving here and there, going from one lane to the other.  Both truck drivers waited, neither moving.  After a few more minutes of this, the porcupine became bored and moved to my driveway very slowly.  The truckdrivers saluted one another and began to move.

I watched the very young porcupine waddle towards my new car (I had an accident two weeks ago and my other car was a total loss -- I only suffered minor bruises to my body and major bruises to my dignity), and stop for a second, only to start up again to make his way to the tall grasses near my driveway.  He left me a small black turd as a souvenir.  He disappeared within a minute or so.  I hope he finds a girlfriend soon to occupy his interest so he can stop wandering on the wrong side of the road; otherwise he will suffer the lot of most porcupines around here and not live to tell the tale.  He was given a good chance at survival by two quite ok guys who just didn't want their day to start with needless roadkill.

Comments

[Amy Lenzo]

What a great story, Ann! Kudos to those two "quite ok white guys" for their patience and sense of connection with the rest of life on this planet!