Turning the bend on the Laird-Norton trail, the path narrows.? Above, rivulets of blue are breaking apart a gray sky. To the right, the weathered brown bark of an apple tree is imprinted with the secret language of the yellow-bellied sapsuckers.? To the left, the emerald expanse of honeysuckle leaves are dotted with red berries.? Below, a worn path parts a sea of green shaggy grass& embedded with a shaggy spot of black!

We pause. The spot is neither a shadow, nor a rock, it has life!? The former mere dark shaggy spot turns its head; its dark eyes stare at us from its dark furry face.? The only lightness of its body are accents of white hardened hairs with barbed tips.? It has but one major predator (the fisher) to fear with this prickly protection and perhaps thus seems only vaguely curious at our presence.? It looks at us, and looks away, turning its head back and forth a few times before hobbling off to the side of the trail, to be swallowed up in the underbrush.

Who was this passerby on the path?? Whats your guess?? At a length of around a foot and half, with a prickly touch, a diner of twigs and leaves, with a preference for the high life in trees, who could it be?

A young porcupine, yes indeed! (Luckily for the mothers, babies are born headfirst with soft quills!)