The latest addition to the Pasty Gallery family, is Betsy Ely, who spotted this little fellow near the Carp Falls... she calls him Gus! Not having met too many porcupines, this image set my mind to wondering if this particular Erethizon Dorsatum is posing for the camera or do they really walk on their hind legs like us? The second photo is a bonus shot of the Falls, which has a 10 foot drop in two stages and is located about 2 1/2 miles southwest of Marquette. From what I understand, it's a rough trail to reach the falls, but thanks to Betsy, we get to check it out without leaving our computer desk.

Whew! Yesterday's What'sUP set some kind of record for the number of messages posted in a day. Again, we encourage you to visit that forum for notes not necessarily relevant to the Pasty Cam. There's a new topic you may want to check today (after you have voted, of course), and that is a Discussion about the discussion.

Good Morning
Marquette County!
My favorite place in da yoop!!!
Have a great day.

what a nice catch of the Porkie. almost looks like a person bracing against the wind.

With thatlittle guy in the road, might need a spair tire;-]

Good morning! Gus is cute & Carp Falls is very pretty. Thanks for all the great pictures every day!

Get Out and Vote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a neat pic. Love the little guy. The falls are great too. Do you know how tall they are?

Nice Fall photos in Betsy's album.

Congratulations to another long-time Pasty Cam contributor, Donn de Yampert, whose U.P. pictures took First Place honors in 2 categories of the photo competition at The American Forest & Paper Association's website. Good stuff!

Good Morning, I love the water falls. The peace and tranquility of it will help me through the day at work.
Thanks for the great job you'll are doing.

Saw the picture of Gus when checking out the galleries yesterday and it reminded me how seldom i see one of these little guys when they are still alive and well. On this road Gus has less to fear!

Great shot of the falls - sorry to say even after living in Marquette i have never been there!

Hey All! This yooper (gone downstate for college) voted absentee - You all better get out and vote today!

Have a great day.

Congratulations Don!
Betsy, your photo is great! It isn't often you see a little porky in broad daylight. Have a good day everyone!

Hey CMU this Yooper graduated from there in 1980
GO CHIPS!! How 'bout that WMU game!!

Thanks.

I had some information wrong. The little falls (pictured here) is the Unnamed falls. The larger falls- pictured also in my album are Carp Falls- which drops about 20 feet. :)
Julie-- it is worth the trip there!

And yes, I voted already as well- absentee ballot :)

Gus is cute! I've never seen a live one but unfortunately have seen a couple laying on the side of the road from Lake Linden to Gay. Great pictures Betsy!

Cute picture today! Thanks for the link, Charlie, to the photo contest winners. I enjoyed looking at them and I'm pleased to see Donn included!

I'm not a Yooper, but do miss seeing the falls all over the U.P. Can't say I have ever seen a Gus outside a zoo either! Have a great day all and enjoy the beauty that surrounds you.
GO BLUE!!!!!!!

I had a dog that introduced himself to 2 porcupines. By the time he met the 3rd one he finally realized they were old friends.

What an awesome picture....you know...for such SHARP little creatures they sure lumbar along gently and have cute little faces.

Good morning from cloudy rainy UPstate NY.
Vote early, vote often!
Great pics. Since the porcupine is standing upright, I guess we'll have to rename it Porcupinus Erectus. Someone call the universities!

Good Morning from rainy Marine City MI, sure wish I was "home" in Marquette.

Mornin' all....Just got back from my little visit to the real world.(traffic,shopping malls,not so fresh air,etc.) Saw lots of friends and family though. They made the trip worth it. Time to go VOTE! Have a great day!

Contgratulations, Donn. I don't know when I've seen an industrial site looking more ethereal.

In the US, when you drive from FL or south GA to the U P, you pass thru several 'zones'. From armadillo to 'possum to porcupine, you can tell where you are by the road kills!

great pictures....memories of falls in the UP is one of my favorite dreams

What a nice way to start a morning. Looking at nice photos and having a cup of coffee.

Good Morning! Such a cute picture of Gus and a beautiful one of the falls. Thanks Betsy!

It's been quite a while since I've seen one of these spiked little fellows! Saw them all the time in NJ, but I don't think I've seen ONE in GA. I wouldn't want to tangle with one, but I personally think they're kinda cute!

Great picture - He appears to be walking.

How many are left in the UP? In twenty years I've only seen one after dark while camping, of at all places, the Porcupine Mountains, and one as road kill.

Do porcupines really walk on their hind legs like this one appears to be doing? I would have thought they moved on all fours.

I saw only one live one when I lived in the UP years ago; it was huge. Saw several road kills, tho'.

Then in ME, I saw a smaller one raiding the apple tree at a camp where I was staying. And road kills there, too.

How adorable is that? I love it!!

Hi from Houston!!!!

GUS is Cool!

Love the colors in the background on the porcupine photo - if it weren't for all the yellow leaves on the ground already, I'd say it looked like late spring.

Seeing the backroads reminded me - how did the SCCA Pro-Rally go? Anyone know?

One of the reasons for the porcupines to be so scarce in the UP is the abundance of pine martens and fishers. They are the natural predators of the porcupine. The martens were introduced in some parts of the UP, about 20 to 25 yrs. ago by the Mich. DNR., They are very vicious predators and are real mean when cornered.

Back in the 40's, on the east shore of Lake Gogebic there was a point on the lake (the locals called it Porcupine Point -- can't remember now if the name stuck) where, on early morning fishing trips, we often saw porkies down along the shoreline. Then on the west side where our camp was (the east side mostly had no permanent camps then), I have a number of memories of my grandfather chasing them away from the woodpile -- they loved to go after the salt in the axe handles and we lost a number of handles when someone forgot to hang the axe up on the side of the cabin. I don't know if they were protected then, but he would chase them away by beating an oar on the ground around them, hoping to scare them enough that they wouldn't come back. They were cute to watch, though. Also back then, we got our wood using cross cut saws and axes -- none of this chain saw stuff. And without wood, you had no kitchen range heat and no cabin heat -- so it was a constant activity.

If ert from GA saw a huge one, and they walk on their hind legs, maybe we solved the Bigfoot mystery.

Porkies are good eating too.

I've had porkies climb onto the roof of my camp in the night time to chew on the deer antlers I had hanging on the eaves. Ihad to go out to chase them away so I could get some sleep. They sure liked to chew on the seats of the Outhouses.

Why did the porcupine cross the road, leaf covered or otherwise?

To prove to the 'possums and 'coons it could be done . . .

On sunday I was having a cup of coffee at a starbucks in portland and I was wearing a NMU sweatshirt when a gentleman asked me if I was from the U.P. I told him I was from the copper country,he was from Vulcan which I guess is next to Norway it just goes to show us that you will never know when you will run into a fellow yooper we ended up sitting outside and having a cup of coffee and talking it was really neat.

Great photos this morning! Check out this website for more
info on porcupines and the Native American quillwork:

http://www.nativetech.org/quill/index.php

How do porkies kiss?------Real Careful.

When I was attending NMU a few years back, friends and I took a trail walk around Presque Isle park and had one of these little guys accompany us for quite a way. I think he was used to getting handouts from picnics. It was all in fun until I tried to pass him up and he raised his quills! No injuries except my heart skipping that beat.

Funny, Sue from Calumet was thinking along similar lines... I looked at that cute shot of Gus and imagined that some 'city slickers' visiting the Northwoods for the first time and seeing Gus walking upright like that might start a whole new rumor! About "The Little Foot: Rare Sighting" ;)
Sure is cute, as usual, thanks for the neet pictures.

Hey Gus! You look a lot like BigFOOT! :^)

Good morning from Mishawaka IN. That little fella sure is cute but I don't think I would want to hold him or pet him. Great pictures! Have a nice day everyone.

Good morning everyone!
There was a city slicker out on one of our field trips one time. She came running out of the woods screaming "BEAR!" at the top of her lungs. We went to investigate and it was just a cute little porcupine ambling through the forest.

I grew up in Calumet and the Keweenaw was full of Porcupines. This was back during the 1950's. I was taught that the Porcupine was the only wild animal that you could kill for food without a weapon. We did a lot of hunting in Keweenaw, back in those days and at that time there was no one living out there. Just wilderness. If you got lost, in these woods, at least you had Porcupines. Where did they all go? You don't see anywhere near the number of them in Keweenaw County today.

rob in dc -- Please explain the 'industrial site' comment. thanks.

Ah, the beautiful U.P.! You can take the boy out of the U.P. but you can't take the U.P. out of the boy. The Lord willing and the Creek don't rise I'll be home in the Keweenaw by next spring.

Happy Election Day from rainy Oregon! I hope everyone gets out and votes today. Oregon is all mail-in balloting, so I voted last week. I am a yooper at heart, have spent several weeks in the Copper Country every summer since I was a kid. Also went to school at NMU. See you guys next summer!

ert:
One of Donn's winning photos is of a paper mill at night with steam rising from the stacks... It is a great shot. Check out the link above... Congratulations Donn! Great work!

A few years ago we had a porcupine mom and her babies living under our cottage at Lake Gogebic. They were munching on the support poles so it was not the ideal place for them to be. Relocation was not easy and I think the mother lost her life in the neighbor's yard.

The Fishers (and Pine Marten?) were reintroduced about 25 years ago and they are one of the few predators that can flip a porcupine on its back to expose the unprotected underside. The fisher population has seen a huge increase which has an inverse effect on the porcupines.

Those of us that go out in the spring to search for antler sheds have to compete with the porkeys as the eat them up pretty fast

Thanks, Dave. I tho't you meant one of the two shots today so I was confused.

We sometimes birdwatch at Savannah Wildlife Refuge in SC. It is just across the Savannah River from industrial Savannah, GA, but sometimes those industries twinkle and shimmer and really are pretty.

Apperantly, the martens in michigan(and elsewhere in the U.S.) are called American Martens. Pine Martens are found in Europe. American and Pine Martens are very closely related. In fact American Martens are often referred to as Pine Martens.

If I could figure out how to paste a picture, I would ;)

Ahh, the Ferocious Fisher, a most cantankerous cuss indeed. I wouldn't challenge one with anything less than a trusty 12 gage on my side to make it fair.

Five of us will backpack into the PORKIES on Thursday.
Hope we don't run into this "sharp" looking creature.

You know, if I could get enough of these little guys to roll around in my front yard, maybe I wouldn't have to rake....

Betsy -
Thanks! Looks like i have missed both of the falls! Thought i had hiked to about every one in the Marquette area. I like to go in the spring during the melt - last time we were almost at Dead River just as Silver Basin gave way!

As a kid I fished the Carp falls area and enjoyed the backwoods and the serenity.....Now we are tied up in the fast lanes of America...One thing about Marquette County and the U.P. in general-You still have that opportunity to enjoy what I once had...
I do not regret moving away as I still find time in the South to find a river or creek and think of the past.
Have a Happy Holiday Season-- 53 days til Christmas

I didn't find "Marten" in my dictionary. Could somebody please post the latin name?
Thnx.

Good day all.
We have seen lots of these critters on all of our trips to the U.P. from Ohio; all had lost a battle with a fast moving vehicle, however. I'm still waiting to see a live one. Of course, neither one of us has seen a bear or a moose, either. Do they really exist, or is that just a scam to get us ignorant Buckeyes to keep coming UP every year? (o:}

Great photos today


Mr. de Yampert, Congratulations on your two winning photographs.

Are there really still moose UP there? I know there be bear, I've seen those . . . and what about wolves and coyotes? And the ever elusive big cat?

Hey all my fellow Yoopers! This one is getting her M.S. in Biology in Illinois (post-'fire up Chips'). So,(For danbury)I know this this little creature is "Erethizon dorsatum" I love these photos! They become my background everyday...so I don't forget about home. Thanks all!

Danbury: Here is the latin name for Martens.
Martes Americana.
I went on my favorite web search engine and found all kinds of web sites for Marten's. If any one is interstested the web site is www.webferret.com.
Enjoyed the picture of Gus. Can remember seeing many of them as a kid growing up in the U.P. Also pulled many a quill out of our dogs, they never learned to leave them alone.

Darkstar, The moose are still on the loose in the U.P.

Darkstar, Wolf and coyote, yes. Big cat, dunno.

saw a huge moose at the hunting camp @ covington junction, off of M28

Darkstar:
The DNR likes to say there are no mountain lions (aka cougars, pumas, catamounts) in the UP. People have seen the big cats. Even a wildlife biologist who is an expert on them has both seen a mountain lion and found evidence (including DNA evidence) of a mountain lion.
We had a black wolf run through our back yard when we lived up in Red Jacket Shaft and on numerous occasions saw coyotes and foxes.
When I was doing some work up in the Rockies, I had a very close and personal encounter with a mountain lion. Majestic animals, but I prefer seeing them from a distance.

If you gave this little guys a cane...it would look as tho he was about to meet up with Winnie-the-pooh or some other storybook character at any moment

My thanks to Marybeth (best wishes for your MS) and Lowell, also for the link.
For those who understand a little german, metager - great metabrowser, especially for scientific information.

Rachel---

I noticed your question above...
this guy did walk on all fours then he stopped and posed for us :)
I'm suprised he wasnt scared.

Betsy,

Great pictures. Have a great day.

Love you,
Mom

Hey, Mike B, here's how to upload a picture:
type \ then the word image, followed by{photo description}. When you hit preview/post message, you'll get a placeholder image and will be asked to "browse" for the picture you want to upload. Once you find it, click send and you're on your way.

Make sure not to have any spaces between the characters (, word image, brackets) and no commas. See this: http://www.pasty.net/cgi-bin/discus4/discus.cgi?pg=formatting#images
if you're still confused :)

Hello, all --

While at da Tech in the mid-70's, I worked on and off as a field assistant for a guy named Rich Earle, who was doing his doctoral work in biology (Dr. Ken Kramm was his mentor/supervisor). Rich was working on the predator/prey relationship between fishers and porcupines. At that time, there were no fishers in the Hiawatha National Forest, but they lived in the Ottawa National Forest (I think I remember that right). Among other things, Rich's work compared the population densities of porkies in the two national forests and concluded that they were something like five times more common where there were no fishers.

Fishers, he said, are uniquely able to prey on porcupines because they have just the right balance between speed and strength; they will run circles around the porcupine until the poor critter is dizzy and confused, then leap in and use their strength to flip the porkie onto its back and the rest of the story is lunchtime.

If you want to see porcupines in the wild, I'd suggest getting a pair of snowshoes and binocs or a telephoto on a camera. Go into woods dominated by hardwoods with occasional stands of hemlock. Check under the hemlocks, and when you find bough clippings and lots of scat on the snow, get out the optics and scan the hemlock. Chances are, you'll find a dark spiny blob up there munching on bark.

Fun trivia: The average porcupine has 30,000 quills. A guy had some time on his hands during the Depression and figured that out.

I have seen a Cougar in the UP, in Aug, 2000 near Iron River, MI...
I was driving down Bates-Amasa RD, in an area with no development about a mile south of US 2, when a Cougar crossed the road about 25 feet in front of me. It was running hard & had a brown body with faint white spots & a tail about 3 feet long (or more).
I slammed on the brakes, but by the time I stopped, it had crossed the road & was gone!
Amazing!
There ARE Cougars in the UP!
The Iron County reporter has had many reports in the past 10 years of Cougar sightings in the Southwestern UP.

Hey Jocko, you sure have to know that there are cougars up there. "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my". Now, there aren't any poisonous snakes, are there?

Lena, MN: There are Timber Rattlers in the U.P. if you know where they are.
When I was a Kid I remember herding a porcupine away from the House and back to the woods useing it was either an ax handle or a stick. The only time they raise their quills is when they feel threathened. You could pet one as long as you go the same way the quills lay.

A FRIEND'S COLLIE GOT TOO CLOSE TO ONE OF THESE. WE TRIED SOME ETHER TO PULL NEEDLES OUT, BUT ENDED UP AT THE VETS , WHO DID A QUICK CURE & OLD SHEP WAS AS GOOD AS NEW. THEY SAID THESE QUILLS WOULD KEEP GOING IN DEEPER & DEEPER.

Love the photo! A few years back my elderly-in-body but youthful-in-spirit laborador retriever, Grady, rolled in dead porcupine, joyfully rubbing the rotting smell deep into her fur and the quills deep into the rest of her. My sister-in-law Barb and I spent two hours cutting and pulling them out. She had many deep in her face and lips. Some were completely buried in the skin and worked their way out weeks later. Amazingly she never got an infection. She never made a sound, either, as we pulled them out. Labs are tough, stoical as Germans (and dumb as rocks, I have to admit).

At the other end of the spectrum is my emergency backup dog Tucker Rabbit, a shepherd/Rott/beagle mix who squealed last winter when he dug into a dead porky in the snow and got two quills in his nose. You'd have thought someone was pulling his ears off! (He's a sweetie, just turned 5 yesterday. May they both have many more!)

yup about porkies kissing, but cut to the nitty gritty, and
afterwards, giving birth to the kits (i'm not sure if kits is right),
how do they do that? hunh?
and yes, if you have to pull quills, snip them open so they can
collapse a little bit, making it easier to work/pull them out,
otherwise the tiny barbs can work the quill all the way through a
dog's jaw.

We were at Whitefish Point about ten years when a big Porkie waddled out of the brush right in front of me. Several young families were nearby with children running around. I hollered "porcupine" and pointed down, everyone grabbed their kids and we all watched in delight as it plodded through the crowd and went under the porch of one of the buildings. Enjoyed the experience but 12 inches was a little close to view a Porkie! Loved the picture of the day!

Jim, here's what i'm learning today-
Porcupines mate in November through December and the
females give birth around May. They do not hibernate over
the winter. Most often, just one single little porky is born,
though sometimes there are two. When the mother delivers
the little bundle, the newborn's quills are very, very soft,
but they harden within an hour after birth. In this way they
don't harm her during the birth (whew!) Porcupines are
born with their eyes open and have their incisors, and can
walk soon after birth. These guys eat mostly pine needles
in the winter months, but like to chew on tool handles
(someone above posted his story about his grandpa's ax)
and hiking boots that have human sweat-evaporated-to-
salt on them.
So Cupid is out there in the woods this month!

yesterday it had to be all about the the picture, today it does not, what gives.

Dear Wondering,

The notes posted here today all appear to be related to the picture or Mary's initial comments. We have had much positive feedback about keeping this focus on the main Cam Notes page, while providing a flexible forum for other discussion on the 'What'sUP' page.

Sounds like you should put out a salt lick if you want to see porcupines. We have three dogs that I think would want to make friends. Ouch!

wow you guys. look closely at the feet and the "pokers" on the porcupines back, its not a real one its just a stuffed animal look very very closely and youll see. lmao...

October 27,2004:Big cat seen attacking a deer on Salmi Road,Toivola.

30,000 quills, huh? The old family dog probably got a thousand or so in her day. Sure kept Dr. Pepper busy!

Porcupines breed in the Fall or early Winter. The courtship ritual involves males who are looking for a mate uttering a high falsetto squeak, while females announce their availability by squalling. When the two come together, they confirm the arrangement with a great deal of nose rubbing

hmmm, and don't even tell us how they manage to mate,
Jim! With a great deal of delicate maneuvers, I imagine!