By Bruce Davidson
My brother’s cottage is a fair distance from mine. And there’s a reasonable amount of wildlife habitat between us. Even so, when it comes to animals, what one of us does can affect the other. So we agree on how we handle wildlife, which is invariably to respect it. Rattlers are tolerated, fox snakes are celebrated, and bears are avoided, for example.
But every once in a while there’s one particular critter that comes around that has certain tendencies that really tick both of us off. And that critter is none other than porcupinus horribilus. In Alex’s case, Alfie the Porcupine has developed a taste for the delicious plywood painstakingly brought over by boat, carried up the path and stored in the crawl space under his cottage. Must be something in the glue. In my case, surprisingly enough, its dahlias and, perhaps not so surprisingly, dogs that are the problem.
Earlier this summer, Alfie distinguished himself by ruining several pieces of plywood in the same night and was apparently looking for a nice salty dessert when my brother confronted him with a loaded .22 rifle. Shining a flashlight straight into his beady black eyes, Alex declared in a voice that was meant to be menacing and stern but came out more like a squeak:
Alfie, if I spare your life, will you get the hell out of here?
Alfie nodded.
And do you promise never to come back?
Alfie nodded twice.
Fast forward a few weeks. A particularly dark night finds me trundling off my back deck wearing shorts and sandals holding a flashlight shining straight ahead. Suddenly I hear a rustling noise way too close for comfort. Not a sound one really wants to hear in an otherwise still night. With hair standing on end I swiftly swing my flashlight over to my left to reveal right beside me none other than good old Alfie, now waddling rather quickly in an attempt to gain refuge under my tool shed. OK, so he kept his promise and left my brother’s place. Great. Except he’s now come to my place and I don’t know how to tell our lab Lola not to be a dog.
Predictably, the very next night my precious yellow mums and lilies are chomped right down to the nub. Beast has declared war on man by this heinous and unprovoked attack struck right to his gardening heart. Man has no choice but to react with overwhelming vigour. Reaching deep into my prefrontal cortex, I cleverly deduce that my quilly tormentor is a sucker for flowers. Diabolically I bait a trap with a nice fresh dahlia (no way I would sacrifice a rose), and leave a trail of mums leading right to it. Bingo, that very night at 3 am in a thunderstorm no less, the trap shuts closed with a loud clang. Amusingly, although Alfie is trapped and supposed to be scared and angry, he still has the gall to eat the dahlia bait in the trap while he awaits his fate in the morning.
Early the next morning I send a picture of our mortal enemy in the trap to my wife Joy in the City, whereupon she immediately phones and says in a very insistent voice: “Can you give him a peanut butter sandwich and some water before you release him?” Silence. “Oh please.”
The photo above is the last known picture of Alfie before transportation to a rarely visited area of Crown Land where plentiful food (other than peanut butter and dahlias) is readily available. Life is good: my flowers are growing back and Lola is no longer afraid to go off the deck.