Seated atop a log to munch on vegetation like a panda with bamboo, this local lounger may almost be mistaken for a beaver.
Far from anyone's first choice of rodent to cuddle, the North American porcupine leads a unique life as the continent's sole quilled creature.
While slow and weak in eyesight, these special spiky specimens compensate with their solitary independence, remarkable appetite and daunting defence strategy.
A misconception exists that porcupines project their pikes through the air toward unwanted company. In truth, they simply erect the quills on their back while reversing toward the intruder and flailing their tail, looking for direct contact. Yet, when not on alert, their softened quills appear strangely silky to the eye.
Widespread across most or all Canadian provinces and territories, porcupines enjoy a diet equally as far-ranging. They munch on small shrubs, canes, sedges, grasses, wildflower stems, layers of hemlocks and other conifers between the wood and inner bark, agricultural crops such as corn, and — when desperate — acorns.
Porcupine populating requires more than 200 days of gestation (humans average around 280), with breeding happening year-round and their lives lingering up to 10 years. However, beyond occasionally sharing communal dens in winter, these wanderers roam our Columbia Mountain forests alone.
Take this peaceful porky porcupine, for example, encountered on an early August evening, leisurely walking a log just a stone's throw from the Illecillewaet River. Unlike many Homo sapiens, this hungry herbivore wasn't afraid to stop and enjoy a meal in its own company, near Meeting of the Waters in Glacier National Park.
And in our inland temperate rainforest, amid how much porcupine populations have dipped in the Pacific Northwest and disappeared elsewhere in the U.S., we're certainly lucky to enjoy their company too.
