Prickly encounters of the intimate kind

“Waaaa, waaaaa, waaaaaa.” The wails were followed by several coughs and a grunt. I could not believe the sounds of what I thought was a baby crying out in the dried bulrush a quarter of a mile from any road.

Through the bulrush they came, not the baby Moses with his sister, but two porcupines.

The wailing male was following closely behind the female while she was coughing and grunting. A couple of times she would turn to face the male, and the two would rub noses.

It is time for porcupines to perform prickly romance.

In the fall? Aren’t porcupines rodents that usually have short gestation times? The answer to both questions is yes. They have almost the same length of gestation as elk – so both species are in the rut at the same time. The female has a pregnancy of 202 days longer than the similarly-sized large rodent, the beaver, which has one of 128 days.

For most of the year the North American porcupine is a solitary animal, but as fall approaches, the female will emit a scented mucus with her urine that will attract the males. Males may fight over a female. Once the female choses a mate, she will be in heat when she gets sprayed with urine from the male. It only takes a few drops to accomplish this. This usually happens in a tree with the male several feet above the female.

To avoid each partner’s 20,000 to 30,000 quills, the couple will contract their skin, causing the quills to lay flat during the reproductive process. Occasionally a quill will end up sticking in one of the partners. No worries — porcupines are the only North American animal with antibiotics produced in their skin to protect them from getting infection from stray quills.

Once the breeding is finished, porcupines become solitary once again. In the spring the female will give birth to a single porcupette with very soft quills, but it takes only a few minutes for the quills to harden and become weapons. The porcupette will stay near the mother until the fall mating season begins.

As I watched the dating scene of these two love-sick pincushions wandering through the bull rushes, another pair showed up, though not so friendly with each other. It was quite a chorus with the males doing the wailing and the females using their full sounding talents with grunts, whines, shrieks and tooth-clicking. When a female would get close to me, she would balance on her hind legs and tail, showing her long claws and clicking her teeth, a warning to stay away. Then they would run or more likely waddle away only to stop again and wonder what danger I imposed.

Porcupine’s greatest dangers are humans, including the roads we build. Only a few other wildlife will dare face the switching tail full of quills. In the West, mountain lions, coyotes, bears, golden eagles and great-horned owls will occasionally take on adult porcupines. Contrary to popular belief, porcupines cannot throw or launch their quills – direct contact with the point is necessary to be injured. When encountering porcupines, physical touching is necessary to get stuck with the hurtful quills.

Next time you are out in the woods during the fall and hear the wailing of a child and clicking of teeth, you may be interrupting a prickly encounter. Sit down and enjoy, as the show may be better than your daily soap opera.