A young female porcupine with a broken tail and infected wound is now in the care of Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Eva Hartmann

Porcupines spend the majority of their time high in the trees, away from predators.

That wasn’t the case for this young female, who ended up in the care of Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society in Kelowna.

The porcupine was brought to the attention of the society by a Vernon dog walker, who regularly passed by the spiky rodent in a grassy park.

After inspecting the porcupine from a safe distance, the walker noticed a large wound on its back.

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“It turned out to have a broken tail... and it had a big wound on it,” Eva Hartmann, founder of interior wildlife, told iNFOnews.ca. “The break is old but the wound was infected and we have to do wound care every day.”

Fortunately, the year-old patient is particularly tolerant of her caregivers, which Hartmann says is not always the case for porcupines.

“It'll take at least several weeks (to heal). It could be a couple of months,” Hartmann said. “It's a deeply infected wound and we're cleaning it daily. We're applying honey on it every day to make sure that it dries out well and of course she's on medication.”

The female porcupine patient weighs in at 3 kilograms, just half the weight of a fully grown adult. Her quills have also not reached their full length.

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Eventually, the porcupine will be covered in 30,000 sharp quills, which she will use to fend off predators like coyotes, wild cats and birds.

The quills are released passively when another animal touches the porcupine.

“It just basically falls out of the mechanism,” Hartmann said. “The only place porcupines don't have quills is on the belly and other than that, they have quills everywhere.”

Contrary to popular belief, porcupines’ quills are not just on their rear end. In fact, they cover their entire backs. The quills closer to the head are shorter and hidden by guard hairs. 

Aside from their prickly exterior, porcupines live a peaceful, solitary life.

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They feed only on vegetation, like the inner bark of trees, shoots, leaves, buds and fruit when they can find it.

They also spend the majority of their in trees, and though they may not be the fastest climbers, they’re well adapted to getting high up in the canopies.

“That's why a lot of people don't notice that we have quite a few around because you'd have to look up in the trees to find them,” Hartmann said. “They are really good climbers. They have very strong legs and very long claws. If you watch a porcupine from close up, it's perfectly made for (climbing).”

More information about Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society can be found here.

More information about the Society's spring fundraiser can be found here.

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