evidence: By ordinary human standards, porcupines have many bad habits. Besides extricating their quills from the noses of pet dogs and livestock, humans must throw out axe handles and leather harnesses chewed beyond use. Porcupines damage, and sometimes kill, trees by gnawing on them; they even gnaw at uninhabited wooden buildings. The human response to porcupines is often an attempt to eradicate them by shooting, trapping, or poisoning. [...] No one seems surprised to learn that porcupines are mostly solitary animals. Near-sighted, slow-moving, they make their dens in rock ledges or hollow trees close to a good food supply. In our region, hemlock is a favorite food source and the mainstay of the porcupine’s winter diet. Although they don’t hibernate, porcupines curtail their activity and their range during the winter, never venturing far from their dens. Porcupine dens are easiest to spot in winter, when there will be large accumulations of scat around the entrances and hemlocks with partially stripped branches nearby. [...] Believed to chew wood and leather for the salt left in it from perspiration, porcupines also need to hone their continuously growing teeth, which may explain why they gnaw at buildings. While tools can easily be stored out of a rodent’s reach, what about the damage porcupines do because of their appetite for the bark and buds of sugar maple, birch, white pine, hemlock, and fruit trees?