I have not shared about my little friend who lives in my woodpile.
Back in April my husband and I spotted a porcupine in the back 20. We were out there taking down old trees and clearing an area. Something up in a tree caught my eye. Lo and behold, it was a porcupine. It is the first one we've seen on our property and the second one I've seen in my life.
Over the summer my husband saw him, off and on, when he would go out to the back of the property, checking out feed piles and making sure the trails were clear. I saw him on occasion, too. We were always mindful of him and gave him his space. My husband would stop and chat with him a little bit.
At some point during the fall this little fella decided to make his way up by the house. Back in October I was in my craft room, doing work for pay, and I heard a commotion going on just outside of the house.
I went out to see what it was, thinking it was the chickens trying to find a new spot to take a dust bath. To my surprise it was the porcupine. He was a little tangled in my garden hose. I think he was trying to climb up on the hose box and lost his footing.
I called out to my son that there was a porcupine outside and he and went outside and spotted the porcupine waddling his way over to the garden area. We spooked the poor little thing when we walked outside
After that we kept an eye open for him. One day he was up by the house again and my son tossed some corn out to him. The porcupine accepted the gift and decided we were good people.
At some point - maybe just before this - he moved into our woodpile.
Throughout the month of November he kept visiting around the house. He started out visiting in the backyard.
One day I was washing dishes and spotted him on top of the rabbit hutch. I was so surprised to see him there.
He was going after the suet cakes on my shepherds hook that is right next to the rabbit hutch.
We decided to give him some corn and fresh water. He seemed very thankful.
I was worried about him making his way back down off the top so we started giving him corn on the ground.
He started showing up in the evening. We had to have a light on so we could take photos. By this time we started calling him Porkie.
At some point he started making his way to the front of the house.
And at some point he managed to wiggle his way in to the house for visits and dinner.
That sweet little face!
 |
Furby is not too happy about having him in the house. She wants to be an "only."
Porkie's first visit in the house, he ate to his little heart's content and then went over by Furby and her tote, and fell asleep. Furby was NOT happy.
You can almost hear the "MOM! He's in my space!"
Furby can see a little bit. She's got one good eye. She pays attention whenever Porkie is in the house. Heaven forbid he get close to her.
He comes to the house about every other day, unless the weather is really bad. There's been only a few of those days. On the really cold days we worried about him and would go check on him. He'd follow us back to the house. Usually making happy little grunt sounds.
He's got a lot of fans with the people I'm friends with on the book of faces. They look forward to seeing the videos and photos.
I belong to a group called "What do you see from your window" It's really fun to see all the different photos from around the world. I've contributed a few photos of the area and a few videos of our sweet little Porkie. The videos of Porkie have gone over well.
The group does have strict rules on what can be shared in there, so most of the videos of Porkie haven't been shared in the group, because they are interior videos. I've started loading videos of him to my YouTube channel.
This past Friday Porkie came for a visit. By this time he's figured out to come to the front door and tap on it and one of us will hear him and let him in.
I heard the tap, tap, tap and went to the door and saw how adorable he looked that I decided to grab my phone and take a photo.
Cute, right?
I posted it to my Facebook feed and a lot of friends said how cute the photo was. I submitted it to the "What do you see from your window" group, sort of as an afterthought, thinking other people would get a kick out of it.
It usually takes a while for submissions to be approved by the admins of the group. A little while later I opened my app and my notifications were blowing up and constantly refreshing. I didn't understand what was going on. I thought people were still commenting on a video I had shared a few days prior.
Nope.
People were liking and commenting on the photo I shared of Porkie. They were commenting and liking SO FAST that my app couldn't keep up. I went to Facebook on my browser and it couldn't keep up either.
In less than 20 minutes the photo had 3,000 likes and hundreds of comments. By the time I went to bed, around 10:30 p.m., CST, the photo has been in the group for about 2 and a half hours and there was 13,000 likes and 2,100 comments.
By the time I logged on the next morning there were 23,800 likes and 3,600 comments.
I never dreamed that a photo of a porcupine would go viral. I'm still in awe when I think of how popular this photo became. I still haven't been able to go through all the comments. Yes, comments are still trickling in. As of right now, 8:16 p.m. on Jan. 11, 2021 there are 37,000 likes and 6,000 comments.
I think this sweet little guy was just what the doctor ordered, after the crazy week that was last week. A lot of people commented that Porkie was just what they needed to see, after what happened the day before, or that they were sick in bed and needed something "happy" to see, or they were having a low day, for various reasons, and seeing his little face gave them reason to smile. A lot of people tagged other people to come see him too. Another thing people commented on was his little paws.
Can you blame them? Those are some seriously cute little paws. When you hand feed him -- yes, you read that right, we hand feed him -- he grabs on to your fingers and it's so sweet that you instantly melt. He has us wrapped around his finger. My sister-in-law came up for a visit and she was thrilled to meet him and be able to feed him and love on him as much as one can.
One thing I haven't really talked about yet is Porkie's serious love of oats. We've offered him so many things to eat, including various fruits and seeds. He turns away from it all. He only wants oats. We hold out our hands and he comes sniffing, hoping for oats and turns away when he realizes our hands are empty. We looked up what porcupines eat and tried to find things that would be comparable to what he'd find in the wild. Right now he would be eating wood, bark and pine tree needles.
Last night he showed up for his visit. I snapped another photo of him before I let him in.
We talked to him a little bit and said how we shared a photo of him on the internet and 37,ooo-plus people thought he was the cutest thing ever, and that he should have his own instagram, facebook page and tik tok. He listened to what we said, while looking thoughtful. He seemed pretty humbled by it all. Then he gave us a look that we are pretty sure meant he was asking "Do you think they have any oats they would like to share?"
No comments:
Post a Comment