THE PORCUPINE ROUNDUP

With your host, our dear friend RichardB.

Remembering with considerable irony the old car ad that said "Ford has a better idea."

I am delighted to welcome RichardB. to Danny's Table. One might rightly suppose that Rich is many a good woman's idea of a good man-- utterly honorable, ruggedly handsome, physically sturdy, and engineer-smart. He is also adventuresome and an excellent writer...  a downright Hemingway-esque combination. (I personally prefer Rich's prose.) We are delighted to share here one of his lighter pieces on rural living, which he penned back in 2010. Enjoy! (DannyM.)

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For those of you that don't know it, porcupines are an unprotected species in New York (like many other rodents) but we think they are the coolest critter you will ever know... so every spring we have a porky party for them in the back of my truck. They don't always cooperate, so we have to assist them in getting the party going.

We had only one getaway this year. It dove into some thick brush that we couldn't fight our way through to chase it down. Getting quilled was not really an issue until our rookie Eric caught the third one. He got nailed pretty good and couldn't get the things out, so he had to defer to the veterans of the group. Jimmy pulled them out of Eric's hand using the patented mountain-man "twist and shout" method... Jimmy twisted them out and Eric shouted.

Actually, if you spin the quills while pulling lightly on them, they come right out and there is no pain involved. All you're left with is a little rash that is gone by morning.

I know everyone is dying to hear about the capture technique. It really is very simple.

A.) Drink.

B.) Drink a lot.

C.) Convince your drunken friends to ride around in the back of your pick up truck with jack lights at a teeth-chattering 15 miles per hour on dirt roads at 11:00pm until 1:00am the next morning.

D.) Once the convinced drunken friends get in the back of the truck and you get rolling, stop 100 yards down the road to let the one that fell out catch up to you so the other said drunken friends can pull him back in.

E.) Spot a porcupine and come to a screeching stop near it.

F.) Abandon the truck and chase down the porcupine. This is not hard since the fastest they can run is about a quick walk for you and me.

G.) First one to the porcupine reaches under its belly and picks it up by its back leg.

H.) Let go of the porcupine, and howl in pain, because you are a drunken idiot and forgot to put on your thick leather gloves. (Are you listening Eric?)

I.) Let the pros gently pick up said porcupine and put it in the back of the truck while you remove quills from yourself.

J.) Drink.

K.) Drink a lot.

L.) Drink a lot with the porcupine. (They like beer) If you want proof, check my photos in my profile and there is a roundup album in there with one drinking a Bud.

An actual photo of an actual porcupine actually drinking a Budweiser.

And so it goes all night until you have as many porkies in the truck as you can catch in a couple of hours.

So why do we do it, people ask? Well, we are environmentalists, and since it is our prickly friends' mating season we are providing a valuable dating service for them by putting them all in one place and getting them all liquored up and then releasing them in one place to do their little porcupine thing. This is not unlike human behavior at T.C. Hooligans or any other human establishment.

Yes, at the end of the evening they are all released unharmed and go on their way, off with their newfound mates to make little pricks for us to catch in years to come.

I think we can all take a lesson from porcupines in the practice of safe sex. After all, porkies have safer sex than any creature on earth. How would you like to snuggle up to one of those bad boys? Hey, they're nothing but braggarts anyway. When one says it has a 6-inch prick it it sounds impressive at first, but then you realize it is talking about the big quill on its tail and it is nothing but a big letdown for the lady porkies.

Anyway, it made for a fun birthday for me and I needed the escape from society and all of its silly rules. With luck we can get some new recruits to come along next year. Who's in?