evidence: After turning the outdoor lights on, I would run out to chase it away, but five minutes later it would return to resume eating my flowers. It was futile—like chasing back a relentless incoming tide. Because of the garden layout, fencing it to keep out porcupines from the nearby coniferous forest and rocky shore wasn’t feasible. Spraying the plants with animal repellent didn’t work either. And because the porcupine is so omnivorous, narrowing the selection of flowers in the beds was not an option for keeping its damage under control. [...] Porcupines love to nibble on tender new shoots. When his saplings fell victim to these animals, who ravaged the trees with their chomping, Larry was outraged. He’d imagined biting into a crisp, honeyed apple grown on his own soil, but each invasion of porcupines made that vision a bitter unmet dream. [...] But porcupines have overpopulated our Schoodic peninsula. Due to a lack of their natural predator, a weasel-like animal called a fisher, porcupines feel free to roam wherever they choose. Not fearful of their human neighbors, they eat whatever people provide in gardens that border the pine, spruce, and fir forests where the animals live.