The Porcupine - "our best pet"

The porcupine was probably the best pet we ever had.  I don't remember that he had a name, maybe "Porky."  My older brother, Oscar, brought a gunny sack to school one day.  After school he was going to Buck Hollow (on the East Mountain) to see Heb (Heber) Simpson.  Heb kept his sheep in Buck Hollow and Oscar was going to go see if Heb had any leppy lambs he could have.  Leppy lambs have been abandoned by their mother and need to be bottle-fed to survive.  The sheepherders don't often have time or supplies to bottle feed the lambs and so will give them away.  Oscar was riding his horse toward Buck Hollow and noticed a mother porcupine walking with two baby porcupines following her along.  Oscar got off his horse, picked up one of the baby porcupines and put it in his gunny sack to bring home - but didn't go to get any lambs.  I remember that night when Oscar pulled a little black ball about two inches long out of the gunny sack.  We could hardly believe what it was.  I think my parents were tickled about having a porcupine to raise.

My sister Ellen was about four years old and she donated her "Betsy Wetsy" baby bottle to the cause and we fed him with cows milk.  When we first got him, he had black coarse hair - kind of like horse hair.  As the porcupine got older, his hair grew to about one inch long and then the quills started growing up through the hair.  After the quills grew in, we couldn't pet him like we had before.  He liked to be petted on his head.  We would hold out our index fingers a few inches apart and the porcupine would come over and put his hands on your fingers.  Then we could lift him onto our laps and pet his head.  He was a very good pet and never tried to strike us.

I don't think Uncle Raymond was "tickled" we had him.  Uncle Raymond had just planted a row of pine trees and our porcupine liked them.  He'd climb up in the trees and nibble on the bark.  Uncle Raymond would bring him back to us in a bucket every now and then.

Laurel Hill was our school teacher and she began planning a pet show at school.  Our porcupine was about a year old and we wanted to take him to the show.  After school, we decided we didn't want to take the porcupine home and we'd play with him the next day.  So we walked around the school yard checking the fence.  We plugged any holes in the fence, so he would be safe and stay put.

The next morning we found him laying dead in the road.  He was in the middle of the road where there is the main road through the valley and then it branches off and goes over the mountain to Grouse Creek.  We were so sad.  We'd left him at school and he'd been trying to come home when he got hit.  Before school started that morning, we held a little funeral and buried him in the school yard.  We found out later that Curtis Nelson had been in Burley that day and was on his way home that evening and ran over our porcupine in an unfortunate accident.

Through the years, we had lots of wild animals as pets: coyotes, bobcats, owls, deer, and lots of lambs - but the porcupine was our favorite.  I think we tried more kinds of wild animals as pets than anyone else did.  The Baker's had deer pets.  Uncle Raymond's family didn't have wild animal pets, but one year he had the Brownies write us a note at Christmas time asking us not to chase Uncle Raymond's geese.