around, I was surprised he had no quills sticking out of him. He was all smiles and kept talking about how I had hit it cor- rectly and the animal was certain to die. My mom was not convinced. “Did you shoot it again to make sure?” she asked him.
“I don’t need to,” he answered. “I’m sure he got it.” They argued over this for a while, and then we drove
home. On the way, they kept asking me why I was frightened at fi rst and refused to get out of the truck to shoot. I fi nally told them I was afraid of being shot with fl ying quills. They had a good laugh, but they went to great lengths to convince me a porcupine must be close enough to swing its tail and hit the person or animal in order for the quills to dislodge from the tail and stick in the unlucky victim. By the time we got home, a fi ve-mile drive, I was starting to believe them. The next day we returned to that fi eld to fi nish hauling
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and stacking the hay, and we could see the porcupine had crawled another couple of feet from where I shot him, and he had died there. Dad was right – I had got him. I hoped that shot saved at least one episode of pulling quills out of the nose of one of our cows, something I now have done probably 20 times or more with Dad. We extracted quills out of fewer sheep than that, but we also had to yank quills from a dog’s nose and a horse’s nose. I had to help Dad on only one animal before I declared
war on all porcupines I ever saw, just like he had done, and his dad had done, and his dad. We had lived for four generations on that farm, and each generation had to pull quills out of our animals’ noses, because animals can’t eat with a mouth full of quills, and they will starve to death if the quills aren’t removed. Animals hit with quills also run the risk of having a quill
work its way through the animal’s mouth, past the nose and eyes, and into the brain, which obviously will kill the animal. Dad had to use pliers almost every time he pulled quills from the animals’ lips, noses, and even inside their mouths. He had to be very thorough and careful to make certain he removed them all. I remember only once when the quills were infected badly enough that the quills’ barbs slid out surrounded by puss, so he didn’t need pliers to yank them. That particular porcupine was the fi rst varmint I ever
shot, and I owe that memorable experience to a very patient father, who didn’t just hurry and shoot the animal himself so we could all get home to supper more quickly. That experience also helped me in more subtle ways than I then knew. When the subject of shooting quills came up again in school, I had a fi rm opinion and voiced it. A few people believed me, not a majority, but I was not bothered that many didn’t believe me and one made fun of what I said. When I mentioned to a friend I had shot a porcupine and never got shot with quills, word soon spread of the feat, and after that almost everyone believed me. I hope we all are as patient as my father with the younger
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Page 24 Spring 2012
generations as we teach them to shoot. And I hope we keep asking questions to fi nd out what they really are afraid of, not just what appears to us they are afraid of. If we take that kind of time, we have a much better chance of making sure the next generations understand what to shoot, how to shoot, and why to shoot. Otherwise, they could learn to not ever shoot and to be comfortable being afraid, a message some are pushing to- day. That is not a lesson I want my posterity to learn from me.
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