Skunks, sheds and porcupines

Spring works slowly at first. Subtle clues begin to appear, signs the sun is covertly winning the battle against winter.

Some clues are unmistakable and irrefutable. These aren’t like the sunny and warm day in February that gets your hopes up, these are solid, undoubtable. They will hold up in a court of law.

North Idaho folk like to tell strange stories of snow in June…and it’s true. I was there. My wife Karen will back me up on this. She remembers it, too.

But these are freak occurrences. At some point the scales tip, and winter begins to lose.

I knew winter was in its final throes when I smelled the skunk on my way home a few weeks ago. The offending smell interrupted the day dream I was having. I slowed down to confirm the olfactory nerve transmissions and said to myself, “Never thought I would be glad to smell that.”

I walked in the front door and smiled to my wife, “The skunks are out. I just smelled one up the hill!”

“Woohoo! Spring’s here!” she exclaimed.

The next morning, I made a side jaunt to check out a shed hunting location that my wife shared with me when we were first married. There was still too much snow, but I knew it wouldn’t be for long. Within a week there were patches of grass on the south-facing slope. The following week there was more brown than white. I decided it was time.

The following afternoon I sat in my truck at the spot where asphalt ended and the snow began. The sun was out. I was in a T-shirt, and the snow was really slush. I ignored the klaxon going off in my brain and blasted my truck through the little snow berm.

I immediately realized that I hadn’t paused to consider my situation long enough, but I was going uphill so I could always back down if needed. I knew that if I slowed down, I would have a hard time getting going again, so I didn’t. I slid and threw slush with my tires for about a mile to the first sharp turn in the road. At this point I knew I couldn’t keep any speed so I thought I might go as wide around the corner as possible then gun it.

Under that much slush I couldn’t really tell where the road began and the ditch ended, but I found out when my front right tire grabbed it. I stopped promptly and thought about my options. I tried backing up to free my tire but that just pulled my back end towards the ditch as well. So I called my wife and told her I was stuck, that I might be a little late, and then I went hiking.

I trudged through wet snow up to my knees, post-holing with every step until I reached the brown spots I’d seen from below. I stood in a clearing with the sun on my back and thought to myself, “This should be the perfect spot.” I crisscrossed the grassy areas and eventually gave up, shrugged my shoulders, then turned around and saw the little forked horn, exactly where it should be.

I took a couple of shameless selfies to send to my wife, who has always been the better shed hunter, and started post-holing my way back down to the truck.

I was unstuck after about five minutes of scraping away the slush with the head of my axe and piling some rocks in the ditch to make a sort of ramp. I then began driving down the mountain.

I decided my next shed hunting jaunt would be somewhere I didn’t have to contend with deep slush.

Two days later I was again post-holing through slush, this time in the back of Q’emlin Park. I was noticing the rubs - spots where a buck will rub off the bark of mostly smaller trees with his antlers - down the hill a little bit from where I was cursing at the snow. I forced my way through the hawthorn and found myself staring at some prints in the snow. Cat prints.

I thought to myself, “What kind of cat would be out here?”

Then in rapid succession, some of those irrefutable clues started assaulting my brain. I turned and saw the base of a tree with the remnants of a bark explosion surrounding it. I was trying to make sense of these clues when I started hearing weird noises to my left. But because I’m a man, and not really quick to noticing the obvious, I was still thinking about the cat prints when my dog Osito came running up and I saw the quills sticking out of his nose. That cat was a porcupine.

I let out a few choice words and grabbed Osito. I started pulling the quills from his nose before he could work them in any deeper. He wasn’t at all happy about the situation, but I finally yanked the last one. Again, ignoring the klaxon going off in my head, I turned to Osito and said, “Let’s find that porcupine.”

We didn’t have far to look, I took about five steps and felt like I was being watched. I looked up and saw the cat-footed porcupine in the tree above us, all puffed up but calmly rubbing at his face with his paws. He knew he was safe. I hoped I was safe, so I set my tripod up in the snow and started taking pictures.

Now, already, almost all the slush has melted away. Spring is gaining momentum.

Skunks, sheds, and porcupines attacking dogs on a sunny afternoon. Three uncontestable proofs that spring has come to North Idaho.

Might still snow in June though.