Animal services find wounded porcupine at Flamborough intersection

Animal services picked up a porcupine this weekend that had wandered down into Flamborough, the second of two rescues in the last month and the first two porcupine rescues this decade, said Animal Services.

On Sunday afternoon, a concerned citizen who noticed the porcupine called animal services. The animal had been wandering around an intersection for the better part of a day, said Brad Potts, supervisor with animal services.

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The porcupine had broken quills and appeared to be in distress, so it was loaded into a crate and taken in the late afternoon. It's a young, male porcupine, who is said to be in good spirits now that a wildlife rescuer has brought the animal to a rescue facility.

He'll remain at the facility until he has healed and is able to live on its own, at which point he'll be released back into the wild.

The male porcupine was found at the corner of Needlepine Drive and Valley Ridge Lane in Flamborough, just east of Highway 6 and north of Carlisle Road, at an intersection that is a short distance from a forested area. It's the second porcupine in the past month that animal services has had to deal with in Flamborough, but it's also the first two that Potts has seen in a decade.

A trend?

It's a trend that could be weather-related, said one expert.

Tys Theysmeyer, head of natural lands with the Royal Botanical Gardens, has rarely seen a porcupine in his time at the RBG, but believes that those forests near the intersection would be attractive habitats.  

He added that the weather is "100 per cent changing animal behaviour. For sure. I would suggest (porcupines) would be more likely to go wandering around than holding their position in the trees," said Theysmeyer.

Porcupines are typically shy creatures, who hang around in trees all day and come down at night. They tend to only walk on the ground when they're moving from tree to tree, said Theysmeyer.

"They're not so different than a beaver — just in a tree," he said.

As the warm weather continues, Brad Potts and Hamilton animal services asks anyone that sees injured or oddly behaving animals, including porcupines, to contact them at 905-574-3433.