Porky For Dinner

Growing up on a farm in Northern Idaho brought with it a number of unusual opportunities.
We were primarily a small dairy operation, but did any number of other things to bring a little extra to the bank account or the table.
We fished as a part of our diet. We shot and ate wild game. I know the taste of venison, moose, elk bear.
And porcupine.
And therein lies a tale.
One winter we had a regular visitor to the barn in the form of a porcupine. We had salt blocks out for the cows, and porky was desperate for the salt, so he was brave enough to venture into the barn for his salt.
We really didn't mind, there was plenty to go around. We didn't even mind it when he gnawed a little on the handles of the shovel or pitchfork.
We had one cow named Spook. She was a little strange. When we were doing milking she would sidle up to the window of the milking parlor and stare in. She would turn her head sideways and open her eye as wide as it would go. hen you were in depth of winter and it was dark outside, you would glance up, and here was this enormous eye peering in the window. The effect was, well, spooky.
Well, Spook was also a very curious cow. She was always sticking her nose into things to see what they were.
You can guess what happened.
When she stuck her nose in the vicinity of old My. Porcupine, he presented her with a nose full of quills.
We were sitting around playing a game of cutthroat Canasta, when this bellowing erupted from the barn. We rushed down to the barn and found Spook bellowing, with a nose full of quills.
We dragged her into the milking parlor and put her head in one of the stanchions and locked it down tight.
Porcupines quills have reverse barbs on them. They go in but you can't just pull them back out.
There are two ways to get then out. If they are positioned where it is possible, you can push them on through something like say, a cows lip. Otherwise you can carefully insert a blade of small size along the shaft and cut them out.
Needless to say, Spook was not enthusiastic about either of these procedures. Two of us attempted to hold her head steady while a third attempted to extract the quills.
After what seemed an eternity and was maybe an hour we had cleaned up her muzzle as Best could be expected.
After thoroughly cussing and discussing the stupidity of the bovine species, we returned to our Canasta tourney.
When it happened the second time, it was curtains for Mr. Porcupine.
Uncle Fred staked himself out in the barn waiting to ambush the porky. He ambled om in the barn, and Uncle Fred shot him. He ambled on. Shot again, he ambled on. He was shot until the .22 cal rifle was empty. Concerned about woundnig an animal and having it wander aground hurt, Uncle Fred clubbed it over the head. That did the job on Mr. Porcupine. Unfortunately it also did the job on the gun stock.
Some where there is a pump Winchester .22 cal rifle with a stock hand carved from a piece of birch harvested from the woodpile.
Since we had a dead porcupine, we decided he looked to be eating size.
We cleaned, skinned and quartered him. I still have some quills in my fly tying supplies.
We took a nice haunch and baked it in the oven like you would a pork roast.
It was the worst tasting meat I have ever eaten.
Since it was winter, browse was scarce, so old Mr. Porky had been feeding on the inner bark of pine trees, one of the few edibles available.
The meat tasted kinda like pork roast marinated in pine-sol.