porcupine -- again

being just a bit gruesome, note dog hair and "crud" on some of the quills, here beside a Canadian dime

Yup! readers of this blog know we have a porcupine population around here with which we manage to get tangled up now and again. Molly, whom I still miss terribly, was usually the one who got a face-full of quills. Now, it seems it's Misty's turn.

I was surprised, actually, because I have seen Misty approach the porker who likes the weeping willow several times, and torn between biting into what must smell like a delicious morsel and avoiding the quills, Misty has in the past, displayed caution. However, today, she came home smelling very rank to me -- obviously our tastes differ. What to her must have been an overwhelmingly attractive scent drove her to roll in it. She came home with crusty (yumm, yumm!!!) smelly stuff on the hair on her neck and a few quills all over her body (vs the face-full Molly is now famous for).

It's a mystery to me how she got only a dozen or so quills all over the body, but my theory is, she rolled in something and didn't notice porcupine quills laying about. In the past, I have noticed an odd quill on the ground, especially by the huge weeping willow by the barn. But even at the entrance to the couple of nests I visit now and then, I don't see a lot of quills -- just a huge pile of droppings. My question is, how did the quills end up on the ground with the "crud"? What's the story? Did some predator alarm the porker, therefore all the quills about?

The quills were quite loosely attached and came out very easily. That's another reason why I think she didn't actually run into a porker, head-on, so to speak; rather she rolled on the ground where the quills were already lying around.

Somehow, Misty knows she is in for a bath, even though I think I use the same tone of voice I might use any other time to call her. It's an operation we both dread. She does the round-backed crawl-on-her-stomach humble-and-pathetic dog pose... Sigh!