Nora Meets a New Friend

Yesterday.  It was around 6 am and time for me to head out to the feed the sheep and hens.  As I was slipping into my Bogs, Nora starts to tell me about this "sighting" she had in the sheep pasture.  At first, she thought it was our friendly, neighborhood ground hog.  But he lives in the cavernous tunnels that he has laboriously, over the past several years, dug into the mound that passes for lawn. It's located on the far side of our property from the pasture, and I said it's unlikely such a little guy could or would travel so far.  Then she went on to describe this fantastic creature that she had, allegedly, seen.  He was "huge," "at least 2-3 feet long," "dark brown" and "fat" "with a little splotch of white under his tail."  I'm thinking to myself that she's finally gone off the edge into cuckoo land...2-3 feet long, with a tail that stands up enough to see a white splotch, but dark brown (i.e., not a skunk whose size Nora has vastly exaggerated), and grazing in the pasture in daylight.  What the hell?? After perusing mugshots of some possible suspects on the iPad, we came to the tentative conclusion that perhaps, just maybe, it had been a fisher.  Now mind you I'm thinking this entire time that she's either seeing things, or this is a case of the 3" perch becoming the 18" bass as the story is retold for the hundredth time.  So, I head out to tend to my animals assuring her that I will look about carefully for our new visitor.  I leave her with a worried look on her face, convinced that a fisher -- although "cool" -- is now on the property and ready to slaughter all innocent life; namely, our hens.

Needless to say my trip to the sheep pasture was uneventful and resulted in not a single alien spotting.

Fast forward to last evening, dusk.  Nora again runs excitedly into the room announcing that the creature has returned.  Rolling my eyes, and wanting to appease her, I walk into the mudroom to look out of the sliding glass door toward the sheep pasture. Well I'll be d*&^ed.  There is a very fat, very brown chubs grazing in our pasture.  But I'm quite certain that is no ground hog, nor a fisher on first glance.

We peer through binoculars, through the gray mist and pouring rain, trying to get a better look at face and tail.  I'm beginning to suspect a lost beaver from the looks of quick flashes of tail, coloring and size.  But grazing in a pasture?  It's difficult to get a clear picture since it rarely lifts its head from the grass and barely moves.  So Nora grabs her camera with the zoom lens and braves the rain.  I continue to look through the binoculars.  At one point, it sits up and does this massively, adorable shake of its entire body and water flies off in all directions -- flash to Bo Derek in the movie "10."  I'm thinking, "hm, longish, spikey looking fur" and then I get a better glimpse of the tail.  I'm thinking we have a big, fat porcupine hanging out in our pasture.  I run to the iPad to check some photos of the tail.  Mind you, I've seen 2 porcupines up close since moving here - an adult and a baby -- but have never gotten a good look at the tail.  I look at the photos.  I think I'm right, but still not positive. When I head back to the mudroom there is no sign of our visitor, or of Nora.  Good god, has she followed it into the woods in her quest to make a new friend?!

But she soon returns; wet and cold, but victorious.  She has no idea what she has seen, but is full of marvel and believes she has captured the elusive creature on film.  She hurriedly uploads photos and we're thrilled to see that she has indeed captured some marvelous shots.  One glance at the first photo and I announce, "porcupine."  Nora is beaming with excitement as we look through the rest of the photos, and she regales me with the tale of her adventure of meeting her new friend -- the slow walk out to the pasture, the creeping closer and closer, the introductory chit chat.  She was little disappointed that it didn't seem nearly as pleased to meet her at first, but also impressed with its reserve.  Eventually, Mr. or Ms. Porcupine grew tired of his/her new friend and waddled off into the woods.