Well I'm back from a stint of work in Burkina-Faso, West Africa as of Saturday and slowly adjusting to the 80 to 90 degree daytime temperature differential. It's about 20 F (-10 C) here during the day and it was between 105 F to 110 F (45 C) where I was working. When we would get back to the hotel after a day of working outside in that heat, our 80 F hotel rooms seemed like heaven. I would have liked it even cooler in my room but 80 F was about all the air conditioner could manage. As part of my readjustment to the somewhat cooler climate of our fair Green Mountain state, I took the dogs for a walk up through the woods this morning, shivering all the way and trying to readjust to walking with snowshoes. It would have been a pretty uneventful short hike except that on the way back Nella started frantically running around a pretty good sized white pine tree and barking excitedly. She never barks when she trees squirrels so I went over to investigate. And there was Pauly the Porcupine about 25 feet up the tree and ambling out on what looked like a pretty fragile limb as he tried to put a little distance between himself and Nella. Imagining what would happen if the branch broke and the two dogs jumped Pauly, and having no desire to spend the rest of the morning pulling dozens of porcupine quills out of the dogs' snouts, I quickly called Nella and hustled the reluctant dogs back onto the path towards home. As usual when something interesting happens up in the woods, I didn't have the camera, so I missed getting Pauly's mug shot. Nonetheless, I've posted a picture that should let you readers imagine the high drama that the dogs and I lived through this morning. The porcupine in the picture seems somewhat smaller than Pauly who is a pretty good sized animal. Also it was snowing this morning, so you'll have to imagine snow falling around the porcupine in the picture to get the full effect of our few moments of terror. O.K., maybe not terror but at least mild concern.
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