It was my intention this morning to find a way into parts of the woods I had never explored and a deer path that led in one direction I wanted to go made that endeavor easy. The path was so well used that I wondered if it might actually be a footpath made by other people, but no, frequent piles of deer droppings and zero signs of footprints in the soft ground suggested a well used deer path.
 
While navigating the deer path I passed by two large oak trees I never knew were in the area. As I passed I heard something scurry up one of the trees. I looked up and saw a porcupine looking down at me. Through the dense tangles I noticed a huge brown colored heap at the base of the tree. A closer investigation revealed what I suspected: a sign of a porcupine den! I made my way around the tree, and sure enough, there was a hole in the tree with a massive pile of porcupine droppings surrounding the entrance and within the hole was a porcupine. Since there was another porcupine up the tree I wondered if the porcupine I saw in the den was a youngster, correctly termed in this case a porcupette. Porcupines are solitary creatures and only come together briefly to mate. Mating takes place in the fall so the young are born in the spring. It seems a bit early, though, for young porcupines, but, except for the possibility that these two porcupines were warring with each other, I don't know how else to explain two being in the same place.