Kids and critters make for some interesting interactions, like what do you do if you’re a kid and catch a porcupine? This is not “Can I have a pony?” or the kind of animal you tell the folks “It followed me home; can I keep it?”

While camping out in the Piutes prospecting for tungsten at the time of the Tehachapi earthquake my dog Tippy showed up with a nose full of porcupine quills. After doctoring Tippy, I fashioned a lasso from a length of rope and went in search of the critter and found it not far away under a large pine tree. It wasn’t difficult to get the loop over the critter’s head and I dragged it back to our camp at Saddle Springs. Now I had a pet porcupine. But other than looking at it and marveling at the strangeness of it what does anyone do with a porcupine? It isn’t like I could pet it or teach it any tricks, but for some odd reason it just seemed like the thing to do; lasso the very large porcupine and drag it back to our camp.

Maybe I was just trying to get even with the critter for hurting Tippy? After all, Tippy wasn’t the kind of dog to harm critters and might have just been curious and here this forest varmint gives him a nose full of quills rather than being friendly! After a time, I released the porcupine not having the foggiest notion of what else to do with it though I suppose it might have made a dinner for us. I was raised not to be squeamish about such things, and grandad being quite wise in wilderness lore taught me better than to name something we might eat or putting up with any nonsense about a pet “Yearling.”

But there is no accounting for the way kids and critters sometimes relate. One night I was awakened by a faint scratching sound inside our cabin on the mining claim. I had a flashlight by my bed and shined it in the direction of the slight sound and there was a skunk on the draining board of our sink. We didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing, but grandad had put in a sink where we could wash dishes and the water drained outside the cabin. Apparently the skunk was looking for something to eat.

I was fascinated by the thought of having a pet skunk, but being nocturnal it would only visit at night so I began to leave scraps of food for it before going to bed. For some reason it didn’t seem prudent for me to advise my grandparents of my visitor (Of such decisions on the part of children often come the nightmares of parents). This worked quite well until I forgot to put Tippy out for the night.

We were all awakened by the pungent odor, and when grandad lit the coal oil lamp a smoky blue haze could be seen hanging in the air. Seems Tippy had once more tried to be friendly with a critter and the skunk didn’t cotton to him. Grandad exhibiting a downright uncharitable attitude toward my pet skunk set about its demise with cyanide-laced sardines. But the skunk having tangled with Tippy and apparently not wanting to make friends with him did not return. However, grandad’s plan did result in finding our cat dead as a doornail the following day.

The Sequoia National Forest was an idyllic place for a boy like me before the Isabella Dam was built and the lake went in. The thousands of acres in which I hunted and fished back then without ever encountering another person seemed designed for a natural born, budding mountain man and I imagined myself taking my rightful place alongside Kit Carson and other worthies; it was just the critters and me without any interlopers or outside interference; absolutely grand and as I came to appreciate an enchanted, almost fairytale world all my own.

There were the drawbacks to be sure; having only a woodstove and fireplace for cooking and heating required I cut down trees, sawed, chopped and split a lot of wood, but because of this I was never in better physical shape in my life though while other children dreamed of bicycles I dreamed of having a chainsaw, but never got one. And living with only a hand-dug well for water presented difficulties of its own.

When it comes to the great outdoors I have no illusions about the simple life in such an environment and I continue to marvel at what it took for my maternal great-grandmother and grandparents to have lived in such harsh, demanding, and very unforgiving conditions. I was a boy and took it all in stride, but what fortitude the old folks must have had to do so without ever a word of complaint speaks of the kind of character they had as my role models. Me complain about living without A/C or a swamp cooler here in the Kern River Valley during the heat of summer? Not hardly. I’m grateful for just having electricity and indoor plumbing. And in winter there is no having to heat water in a kettle on a woodstove after kindling and lighting that in the mornings to thaw out the hand pump for a well. I turn on a tap and out comes the water; but it is something that because of my having lived without such a wonder I have never taken for granted.

But I miss many things here in the valley I enjoyed as a boy. At the beginning of each summer I would move my bed outside under an old pine and fall asleep to the music only a pine tree can make as a soft and fragrant evening breeze brushed the needles of the tree with a pleasing sound as though an angel’s hands were gently moving over the strings of a heavenly harp.

There were seldom any bears around our place, so I didn’t worry about them as I slept outdoors. Of more worry now would be the two-legged barbarous, uncivilized creatures without any of the redeeming qualities of those found in nature.

Despite the lack of a population for society or the entertaining diversions common to city dwellers there was plenty of excitement to be found in nature for a boy like me. There was the time I was hunting quail for the family pot and Tippy chased up a mountain lion and seemed to aim it in my direction; but the big cat made a 90 degree turn from me as it abruptly showed up at a slow trot only about fifteen feet away! At least I had the good sense not to irritate the lion or get its attention with a load of #8 from a singleshot .410.

We never killed any wild critters excepting those that threatened livestock or as food for our table. Rattlesnakes and ground squirrels were the exceptions, and I dutifully effected the transmigration of these to the nether regions without a pang of conscience. Never in my life have I seen so many fleas as found on a ground squirrel!

It seems it takes too many people crowding in where nature never intended them to turn everything topsy-turvy. I don’t begrudge folks wanting to live with nature, but they should understand that nature has its own rules it plays by. But I would caution parents who think nature will accommodate curious children without threat or injury.

Looking back it amazes me that I survived some of the experiences I had here as a boy, some of which had I shared them with my grandparents might have given them heart failure! Guardian angels? Perhaps. But they do seem almost capricious at times, seeming to be quite choosey about who to guard from what, and nowhere in the literature fabulous as it may be about them do I find any accommodation for just plain stupidity; of such are those in my opinion for example that believe lions and tigers make neat pets. I do admit to having a prejudice against caging wild animals even in zoos.

I would far rather nature was allowed to follow its own rules, but humans just seem determined to bend nature to their own will. I have to suppose from my own experience nature has a way of catching out the foolish and dealing with them. That the ways of nature are dreadfully harsh at times should be a lesson for all of us humans, but it seems we are determined to flaunt nature, even too often seeming to despise our own planet and treating it contemptuously and that I have to believe is to our own harm.

While nature is indeed red in tooth and claw, harsh and unforgiving of the foolish it is for us to accommodate ourselves to nature, not to destroy as is the way of overpopulation and growing demands on dwindling resources the good things nature supplies. Looking back I realize there are some things I learned from my pioneer life it has taken a lifetime to appreciate. I can only hope there are many without such an experience that will appreciate these things as well before it is too late and kids no longer have a chance to learn from nature and its critters in the wild.