Quills or no quills, better look out: Pennsylvania declares hunting season on porcupines -- with hunters allowed to bag six spiky critters per day. The animals might be slow-moving but they carry big sticks.
The word has just come down from game officials, with plans to open hunting season shortly for the spiky, slow animals.
Apparently if you piss someone off, that's all it takes -- so, sloths, watch out: angry residents say the porcupine population has risen and that the increase has meant the critters are destroying property. Out they go, and the limits aren't minimal at six a day. The Pennsylvania state director of the Humane Society of the United States, Sarah Speed, isn't happy with a declaration of open hunting season on porcupines. Speed calls the decision "a mockery of ecological conservation," stating "we have no information about how many porcupines are currently in existence and what kind of impact hunting them would have."
Hunters will be allowed to kill porcupines from the fall season beginning September 1 through spring months ending on March 31, according to the Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners. Allowing the hunt of porcupines in Pennsylvania is a first -- at least in recent times, since the spiky critters have been protected for at least the past two decades since the 1980s. Until now, any porcupines killed for causing property damage had to be reported.
But apparently porcupines have taken a liking to metals -- and it hasn't made people too happy.
The porcupines have been spreading recently in the north-central part of Pennsylvania state -- where the animals are accused of inflicting an "enormous amount of damage" and complaints from homeowners and residents, commissioner spokesman Jerry Feaser has announced.
Feaser claims porcupines have been eating aluminum siding off cabins or homes, eaten brake lines and other parts on cars, and will eat anything with a salt residue. Apparently, if it's salty, it's tasty. Porcupines are also intrigued by the taste of wood including tree bark -- capable of taking down the forestry, or at least part of it. It seems porcupines have got some skills on par with woodchucks: "They'll literally girdle a tree and kill it," according to Feaser. "It's amazing what damage these little critters can do."
New, open hunting season guidelines say hunters are allowed to take six porcupines per day during the season. But no word on who's keeping track. Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York already consider porcupines a nuisance and allow hunting.
There could be a worse fate for the porcupines -- porcupine serves as an eat around the world, with claims it tastes like beef and the meat used for stew. Perhaps better than claiming it "tastes just like chicken."