Sunday, July 17, 2011
Driving down Route 2 in Grafton at 1:30 in the morning and spotted a critter in the middle of my lane - I'm pretty sure it was facing away from me and looked back over its shoulder just before I wrenched the wheel to try to avoid it. Didn't feel any impact, though I scared the heck out of Ann who was dozing in the passenger seat.
Turned around a little ways up the road and went back to see if there was anything in the road... no sign of the critter, so maybe it made it away OK. Turned around again and we finished the trip back to Albany. I wasn't all that sure what I'd avoided hitting, except that it didn't look like a raccoon or anything else I'm used to seeing... maybe a porcupine? If so I'm bummed, because I've always wanted to see one in the wild and this was way too brief a glimpse...
When we went out to the car this afternoon it became very clear that it was indeed a porcupine and that it had a much too close call with my front tire:
I certainly hope the porcupine made it through the experience OK (other than leaving a bunch of reminders of our early morning encounter in my tire.)
JMH
