When you see something like the above scattered about your garage floor and the attic you know you've been visited by the local wildlife. This was what greeted me on a recent morning as I entered my garage a couple of Saturdays ago. Besides the droppings, the steps, shown below, had been gnawed indicating that the visitor was a porcupine. It must have entered though the cat door from the breezeway between the garage and the house. I cleaned up the droppings I could find, some in pretty odd places. Two or three here, several others elsewhere. So that night and the next I stood up a concrete block in front of the cat door as I closed things up before bedtime.
The second night after the first incursion, at 2:45 am Patches took off down the stairs growling and barking with E'oywn in hot pursuit, disturbing my delicate beauty rest. They sounded so determined that I headed downstairs after them. I hit the light for the breezeway, opened the door leaving the storm door closed and we looked left and right along the decking - nothing there. Patch must have been spooked by something the cat did. Stepping back to close the door I looked up and at the top of the door to the garage the freakin' porcupine was at the top of the door frame working his way down. Good thing I hadn't let the dogs out or it would have been a double dose of quill face to deal with.
Well our friend ambled off into the dark and I went back to bed only to hear Patches "woof" about a half hour later. As I had been trying to get back to sleep I had a feeling I should have left the lights on. I went back to the door and sure enough the waddling pin cushion was back up on the door. This time when he had climbed down I gave him a hearty poke with a long handled spade to encourage him to skedaddle along dropping a few quills in his wake. I then left the outside lights on in the breezeway and back yard. No return visits the next couple of nights but in the morning after the third night there were droppings on the front patio so I began leaving the outside light there on through the night. I'll give it another week or two then try a night without the lights to see if he's found another activity to keep him busy.
1 comment:
Ian looks Great! Does he look older .... errr .... more mature to you? He left still looking like a kid, now he looks like a young man.
Am I wrong or did you really luck out in your porcupine poking? The deer was a much more pleasant visitor.
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