Tusayan Ike and the Porcupines

Tusayan Ike and the Porcupines Do Porcupines Gather Fruit on Their Quills and Carry It Home to Their Young? Here May Be the Answer

WELL, here goes, even if I do run the risk of jeopardizing my reputation for veracity. I'll no doubt get by with this yarn if Elmer Higgins scans it while in the midst of a state of mental lapse, lethargy, so to speak, but there will be some who will no doubt remember snatches of rumor pertaining to this same catastrophy that I'm about to chronicle.

My credulity was shocked somewhat while listening to the remarks of a young naturalist who delivered a lecture at the top of Bright Angel Trail the other night. He had captured a porcupine the night before the lecture and displayed the varmint during his talk. While in the midst of his lecture an old pilgrim popped out with the question: "Is it true that porcupines gather fruit on their quills, carry it home to their young, then suck it?"

Well, one thought brought on another until I rustled around and gathered this wholesome bit of (history?). Isaac Redstone, whose native state was Arkansaw, took it into his head to migrate to Nevada during the Rawhide rush. He traveled by mule and wagon until he met up with the Grand Canyon, south rim, and looking down into the big ditch he figured it was some "holler". Being some thirsty he pulled off a healthy cedar limb, straddled it like a kid playing horse, took off the rim right where Bright Angel Trail takes out and slid to the bottom.

With very little imagination I can shut my eyes and hear the rocks rolling and see the cloud of dust Ike created on his mad ride to the Rio.

His thirst slaked and being quite some agriculturist, Ike could not help but notice the possibilities that lie in wait for a Luther Burbank. He was no mean gardner, Ike. He'd developed a high bush strawberry back there in Arkansaw and brought some of the roots with him so he set them out in a nice level patch at the river edge and watched them grow.

Then came the tourists, easterners whose womenfolks were willing to pay a fat price for berries right off the vine, but kicked about the stained fingersfrom eating berries with no better handhold than the natural "cap" that God put on the luscious fruit This set Ike to figuring. You can't get the best of an Arkansawyer if he gets up enough ambition to carry out the child of his ingenuity, so Ike conceived the swell idea of providing the berries with handles something likethe skewers that come with a lollypop. But it took a lot of work to gather the handles and Ike was not too ambitious, so being of the same mental calibre as the old pilgrim that asked that fool question of the Ranger, he conceivedthe bright idea of using porcupine quills for strawberry handles.

Now if you get the idea we will go ahead with the yarn. Ike had to have plenty porcupines to furnish quills for his strawberry ladyfingers so he hired a gang of Indian kids out of Havasupai canyon to rustle porkys. That done and having planted his highbush strawberries in rows just the right distance apart, he trained the easily-tamed porcupines to run across the strawberry patch at call, and being a real Arkansaw hogcaller Ike was some successful. Are you beginning to get the Idea?

The porkys would run or waddle from one end of the patch to the other, at Ike's call, and in the course of their travels they would annex a ripe strawberry on the end of nearly every quill.

Now, as the ranger explained, the quills are imbedded in a thick layer of fat and extract themselves very easily from the varmint's hide. Now get this. Ike was in a quandry as to how he was going to get the berries, each speared with a quill, off the animal's back without get-ting stuck with a few stray quills that had not been utilized as a handle, so by using up a lot of mental energy and patience Ike taught the porkys to crawl into a basket and shake themselves at the end of each row. There you are; strawberries ready for market without a backache in a carload.

You might get the idea that the ladies would gather a few quills in their ton-gues in the eating, but not so; the porcupine quill when subjected to the fruit acid of the berry softens at the end, thereby making them safe to handle on the most tender tongue. But this process takes several hours, which worked into Ike's plans perfectly. As we all know, a porcupine is a nocturnal beast and will only work nights. That played right into Ike's hand, for by morning when the tourist rush was on, the straw-berry handles were harmless to the exploring tongue.

Ike should have gotten along famously, and would no doubt be selling strawberries with handles right now, but one evening, about the gathering (Continued on page 24)