What to do when a porcupine raises his quills?

Sorry that I haven't posted in a few days. We have been traveling, I will tell you more in the next couple of days, but I wanted to show what we came by along our route:








Mind you we have seen porcupines in the zoo, but never up close and personal. As you can see, when DH tried to take his picture out his window, Mr. Porcupine became a little camera shy and raised his quills. This was the only picture we took before we decided to move along. Of course, when I look at this, I thought how useful quills could be on humans. When someone was annoyed or out of sorts, we would know to avoid them just by quill position. Just think of all the fights and uncomfortable conversations you could avoid.


Porcupines, by the way, are rodents. He is a mammal and dines on plants (herbivore). Porcupines cannot shoot there quills and regrow quills as they loose them. One of Mr. Porcupine's relatives actually can grow quills up to a foot long. He does not have quills on his under belly. When a baby porcupine is born the quills are soft but harden within an hour or so.