Even if it bites you they have medicinal saliva.
(And nonmedicinal toxic potentially deadly venom. I shouldn’t downplay the venom.)
Xema:
Quite, yes.
So are you saying that he shouldn’t put this on his resume?
Don’t worry, petting a porcupine is very low on the list of “stupid things you can do while drunk during spring break in mexico”.
Oh I very well know… thirty some years ago it involved jumping off of a balcony onto a loose tile roof and falling into a glass table below. Thirty seven stitches were also involved. It wasn’t me, but Ron got sent home early.
I of course had a vacation that would have made the pope look like a wild man… you can ask my mom… that is the version that she was told.
This was in a book of poems I had as a kid. No idea who wrote it, but it seems apropos.
Rebecca Jane, a friend of mine
Went out to pet a porcupine.
She very shortly came back in,
Disgusted with the porcupin.
“One never, ever should,” said Jane,
“Attempt to pet a porcupain!”
A stupid incident, sure. But as others have said, it ain’t the worst. Not like drinking your puny weight in southern comfort, Jack and beer mixed together and ending up in Medford, NJ jail at age 17, no shirt, no shoes, and livid parents when picked up that evening.
Nice story to pull out when reassuring young patients who have also done stupid stuff? Check.
Good for a possible future memoir? Check.
Bullet point on a CV? Probably not.
“Pat”, not “pet” according to this.
It would have been very low on my list of “things to think of doing while drunk during spring break”. But those were other times.
“Drunk, wounded and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
You can even whack a porcupine.
I can pet a monkey-puzzle tree. How many of you can do that?
(See link. Has pictures, including close-ups of a branch with leaves. The leaves are stiff and each leaf has a sharp thorn at its tip.)
I have a friend with one of these in his front lawn, guarding the approach to his front door. Intruders fear to pass, and few return unscathed who try. But I stop to pet his monkey-puzzle tree every time I visit.
Vive l’stupide libre!
What has society come to when a man can’t pet a porcupine?
(Today happens to be the birthday of a frat brother who several decades ago slept with a raccoon – woke up in the middle of the night, petted it thinking it was his cat, went back to sleep, and woke up in the morning with it still cuddled up against him.)
Or Mexican jail, which is where I thought this was going.
I thought the punchline to “how do porcupines make love?” was “very carefully”. I didn’t know it was “after way too much tequila”.
Glad your son is OK. Putting this incident on his resume? No. Putting it on YouTube? Maybe.
Regards,
Shodan
Actually, the answer to that one is “after watersports”.
An E-4 tanker over the age of majority.
Methinks you have something against porcupines.
Ah well, it’s pretty hard to quote a poem you last ran across at the age of ten from memory 
groin
grin
carnal
sin
pretty
city
grandma’s titty
Porcupines are rodents. They are very seldom infected with the rabies virus , and there are no recorded cases of rodent to human transmission. Also, getting poked with quills is not the same as getting bitten - the rabies virus is present in infected animals’ saliva.