The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1903-04-03
P0RcUPINES IN MAINE.
Hordes Of napaclous Beasts Swarm
Through the Woods Destroying
.s&s Valuable Trees. =

Eastern Maine has Of late been cali
ing upon the Legislature for means to
fit out an army to repel an Invasion
from New Brunswick. The invaders
are armed with ,knifelike teeth and
spearlike bristles and they eat up for
ests, lumber camps and farming tools
and kill horses. They are porcupines,
both fretful and destructive, and they
have overrun Washington county,
| swarming from St.. Croix to the Mar
raguagus and marching in regiments
along the banks of the Machias, says
/ a recent report from Bangor.
They are easy to kill, but, being ut
terly worthless, no one will take~the
trouble to go on the warpath for them,
and so Washington county, through,
her representatives in the legislature,
is calling upon the state of Maine to
offer a small bounty in cashfor every
porcupine killed, confident that this
would be the means of cleaning out
the varmints and thus relieving the
county of a pest that is. declared by
lumbermen to be far more destructive
than forest fires.
Twenty-Five years ago there was
scarcely a .%porcupine to be found in
eastern Maine, but at that time they
began. coming here from New Bruins
wick, in which province they are as
thick as ants and seem to sprout from
the ground like weeds. At first no
notice was taken of the invasion and
TIE destruction of the hackmatack
and juniper was attributed to the
hackmatac worm, which can eat
up timber faster than a band
mill. Millions of feet of the
best ship timber was destroyed, all
by worms it was supposed, but when
the worms had disappeared the de-
struction. continued, and lately it has
dawned upon the lumbermen that the
porcupine is a far wokse pest than the
borer.
Porcupines, it is now known, kill.
thousands of big spruce by gnawing
great strips of bark from the trunks,
beginning two-thirds up the trunk and
circling around the tree toward the
bottom. The same method of destruc-
ton is employed on the pine, juniper
and various hard wood trees, while the
hemlocks and cedars are killed by
gnawing off the branches from the top
down. The hackmatacks are now be-
ing killed off at an alarming rate, and
soon, unless something is lone to ex-
terminate the pests, there will b ehard-
ly a stick of that species left in WASH
ington county.
A hunter who has lately returned
from the headwaters of the Machias
river saw group of So large spruces
that had been killed within a month
by porcupines, while other growths
suffered in proportion. Porcupines,
like wolves, will fight when gathered
in numbers, and the crew that went last
fall to begin the seasons work at a
lumber camp in township 37had a taste
of their quality. The men found the;
camp occupied by a swarm of porcu-
pines, which resisted eviction, and a
fight followed that lasted for hours,
the porcupines retiring to the woods
only after ~ of them had been slain.
They had gnawed the hunks, tables,
managers and even the sashes and doors
of the camp, so that extensive repairs
had to be made before the crew could
begin work.
Cases have been known where por-
cupines ate the handles off haying tools
left in the field over night. They have
destroyed several valuable anoes
along the Machias river, gnawing
through the ribs and the bark or can
vas covering. Last fall a valuable colt
in Crawford stepped upon a %porcupine
that lay concealed in the tall grass,
and limped home with his ankle pierced
to the joint with quilts, which caused
his death next day.
1t is expected that the legislature
will grant a small bounty on porcu-
pines, and that every man and boy
in the rural regions of Washington
county who owns or can borrow a gun,
ak or club will soon be on the war
path for the invaders from New Bruns=
wick.