Throughout central Maine the porcupines are hungry. They are on the prowl now every night and sometimes during the day. They can do serious damage to a tree in one sitting. And what do they love to eat more than anything else? Their number one go-tos are the branches of apple trees that bear sweet (low-acid) apples. Not the fruit, but the branches themselves. They return to those trees in our orchards every year. They skip the trees with your typical acidic apples. Year after year after year.

How can they possibly know which trees bear sweet apples? It probably isn’t trial and error. If it was trial and error, we’d at least see some damage on assorted random trees. But we don’t. Somehow they know. This must mean that the elevated sugar content in sweet, low-acid apples must be in the branches as well. Who’d a thunk it? They also love pear trees so there’s something in the pear branches they covet too.

Orchardists get out there and do battle with the porcys. It’s not something any of us relish. Often the death sentence is the only solution. But what a drag. After all, the porcupines have been here for a very long time. Don’t they deserve a place in the landscape? One orchardist friend told us he scoops them up into a trash can using the lid as the scooper and drives them off to some distance location. (Our orchard?)

This year I’m trying sheet metal sleeves. A roofing company generously gave me a partial roll of dented sheet metal ends. Gold, no less! They even cut them up for me into random length pieces. Skylar and I wrapped the sheet metal around the trunks of our sweetest trees and secured it with duct tape. Try and get over that, you hungry porcipines.