Found via FOTT #30.

The nearest I’ve been to a porcupine in a tree was also in Pennsylvania, in Potter County up by the New York border. Somehow it doesn’t seem safe to have all those quills hanging over one’s head.

Marja-Leena – The snow is pretty unusual for this time of year. some years we don’t even get a white Christmas, let along a white Thanksgiving (tomorrow in the USA).

CGP – I’m not sure if s/he would’ve been quite so unperturbed if it had been someone else. Living below my floor, I imagine it must be accustomed to my odor.

Peter – Glad you (and so many others) found the video as engrossing as I did. Perhaps you or John should start a site devoted to slow film? I find the frequent cuts of most contemporary documentaries distracting. Nanook of the North set the standard, as far as I’m concerned.

Lady P – Thanks for sharing that photo! (Hope you don’t mind that I made it a link – i don’t want to be stealing someone else’s bandwidth.)

Peg – Thanks. I guess I was pretty fortunate in the soundtrack for this one.

John – That’s actually not thunder, but the sound of wind on my camera’s tiny, tinny microphone. Unless you mean the passing jet at one point.

Sherry – Cool! The video does have a kind of thanksgiving-feast ambience to it, doesn’t it? And you were just asking about my Facebook avatar, so the timing couldn’t have been better.

Bill – Believe it. This is precisely the aesthetic I was aiming for: “Poorly edited, out-of-focus nature documentaries in which very little happens.”

Jean – Thanks for letting me know. Yes, hedgehogs are pretty much just burrowing animals, aren’t they? North American porcupines like climbing trees as well as holing up in caves, rock shelters, or hollow trees.

pohanginapete – I didn’t know there were porcupines in India; I only knew about the African ones. I figured you’d appreciate the Tove Jansson reference though. (I just re-read Moominland Midwinter.)

John – I was never too successful in my tree fort-building attempts as a kid. We usually ended up with just a few planks. I think our mistake was in trying to build with the hard-as-nails oak lumber that was lying around the barn.

Rebecca – We’ve had quite a few porkies here over the years, and they have killed the odd tree through over-attention, but in general we don’t find them the threat that foresters make them out to be. And now that fishers have moved in (probably expanding up from West Virginia), their numbers are down considerably. As I’m sure you know, porcupines continue to move south; you might get them one day. They’ve been in this area for less than 50 years, I think.

Whatever the biogeographic story, the cinematic story is wonderful. Much better than anything I’ve watched on YouTube.