Prickly Customers

We were driving along the M3 towards the city centre around 11 o’clock one night a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly, something ran across the road in the distance just before UCT. “What’s that?” Siegie asked.

It was too big to be a cat and had a strange shuffling gait. As we drew alongside, we both saw the animal’s spiky backside and knew immediately what it was. “Porcupine!” we cried in unison.

Strangely, this is the very first time we’ve seen a porcupine in the Cape peninsula. It’s strange because we know that they thrive on the mountain slopes and have even adapted to the greener edges of suburbia.

The evidence of their activity is often to be seen in the form of scraped out holes and the empty husks of dug up bulbs. But at this time of year, when the winter rains plump up the arums lilies, they shamelessly raid gardens such as the one we nurture on the banks of the Hout Bay River.

And that’s why I’m always facing a conflict of interest. I love the thought of wildlife in my garden and go out of my way to attract creatures through planting tasty indigenous fare. But porcupines and I both love arum lilies and I wish they wouldn’t be quite so destructive.

The morning after a night when porcupines come up from the river to dine in our garden looks like tiny landmines have gone off all over the flower beds. Arum leaves and flowers lie discarded in the mounds of earth – it’s only the juicy stuff below ground that makes a porcupine meal. Often an isolated quill points to the culprit.

You’d think a big dog that sleeps outside at night would scare them off. But Rhea, our ridgeback, learned the hard way to leave well alone.

Early one morning, when she was about a year old, Siegie was in the kitchen putting the kettle on when he noticed her walk past outside. Even in the half light something looked odd, so he opened the door and discovered three quills in her back legs.

We called our vet, who suggested we not try to remove the quills ourselves but rather to cut them off with pliers. And since it wasn’t life-threatening, we could bring her in when the surgery opened.

Rhea and I were at the clinic at 8.15. The vet took one look at the quill embedded at a nasty angle in her thigh muscle and said he’d need to knock her out. It’s no wonder she now gives porcupines a wide berth – and she’d avoid the vet too if she could.

So these prickly customers have free rein in our garden, even venturing right up to the patio. We found a quill there the other day and know they’re staking out the juiciest plants. The War of the Arums is about to begin.