After a brief pause, Ereth continued downhill. Moving as fast as the deep snow and his short legs allowed, he waddled across the open space between hill and cabin. Heart racing, panting for breath, he ducked under the structure.
He was there. The heat radiating down from the house above was instantly soothing.
Ereth took a deep breath and looked around. Only a little snow had collected, and that on the northern side. He noticed a broken chair, a blue plastic tarpaulin bunched up in a corner, a canoe, a snowmobile, a pile of long logs, and, on the pile, an axe.
Unable to restrain himself, Ereth rushed forward, climbed the log pile, sniffed at the axe handle, and all but swooned. The axe handle bore the remains of human sweat: salt.
Heart aflutter, Ereth stuck out his tongue and began to lick the handle as a human would attack an ice cream cone. Oh, rapture! Oh, bliss! Oh, salt! It was all he had imagined. The struggle through the snow had been worth it!
In a dreamy mood, he had just begun to chew on the axe handle when he was interrupted by the sound of a human voice from above.
“I’m telling you, Wayne,” the voice said, “I’m so hungry I could eat a live porcupine!”
“Pulsating puppy pimples,” Ereth snarled. “He can start by chewing my tail!”
Despite brave thoughts, Ereth, wondering if it might be better to bolt from the cabin while escape was still easy, looked around nervously. Though everything in him told him to run, the idea of doing something to teach that human a lesson was hard to resist.
Turning back to the axe handle, an angry Ereth gnawed furiously. As he chewed, he cast his eyes around in search of something else to mangle.
That’s when he spied the snowmobile. Ereth was perfectly aware what it was. He had experienced just how much noise they made, the ghastly fumes they left in their wake, the way they chewed up the forest floor. Having seen them from a distance he also knew how humans used them: by sitting on the long black seat that ran down the middle, then twisting the handlebars, which caused the machine to shoot forward at enormously loud and smelly speeds.
Though Ereth did not like snowmobiles, humans, he knew, loved them. As far as he was concerned, that made the snowmobile the perfect target.
Having chewed the axe handle almost in two, the porcupine waddled over to the snowmobile. Using his front paws, he hoisted himself onto the black seat. It was soft and pliable. Twisting around, he lifted his tail and whacked it a few times. When he was done, a goodly number of quills remained sticking straight up from the seat. “Burping bird burgers,” he muttered. “That’ll fix them.”
That accomplished, Ereth used his high perch to observe the rest of the area. In doing so he noticed a cardboard box and wondered if there was anything in it worth eating.
Climbing down from the snowmobile, he waddled over to the box and peered inside, only to recoil in fear. The box held four black, metal spring traps, the kind human trappers use to catch animals by their legs. There was also a box trap, designed to catch larger animals alive and transport them elsewhere.
“Killers,” Ereth whispered in fury. “They’re nothing but killers!”
“Hey, Parker,” one of the human voices suddenly said from above. “We need to get some more firewood. Where’d you leave that axe?”
“Under the cabin. On the log pile.”
“If we’re going to keep from freezing tonight I better chop us some more wood. It’s getting colder.”
“Suits me.”
“Fine,” the voice said. “I’m going to get some wood from under the cabin. Be right back.” The conversation was followed by the sound of one of the humans moving toward the cabin door.
Ereth, close to panic, looked for a place to conceal himself. He caught sight of the blue plastic tarpaulin off in a corner.
From above came more footsteps as well as the sound of a door opening and closing. Hurriedly Ereth clawed his way under the plastic.
CHAPTER 6
Ereth’s Revenge
FROM BENEATH THE TARPAULIN Ereth could see nothing. But he could hear someone stomp out onto the porch, then crunch through the snow around the cabin. There were some grunts and groans, which Ereth presumed were the sounds of the human lifting one of the logs. For a moment all Ereth could hear was breathing. Then he heard a snap, followed by a cry: “Gol darn! Who did this?”
A smiling Ereth knew the man had tried to use the axe.
“Must have been a porcupine!” the man snarled. “Stupid jerk!”
Ereth grinned.
The human swearing was followed by the sound of steps that suggested the man was going back around the cabin to the porch.
Ereth poked his head out from under the plastic and listened intently. Within moments there came the sound of a human voice.
“Hey, Wayne! Some blazing idiot of a porcupine chewed through the axe handle. Busted on my first stroke. Can’t use it.”
“Oh, oh.”
“And hey, man, with night coming on and the temperature dropping, we’re going to run out of heat. Maybe we better head out while the going is good. Not much point in hanging around here anyway.”
“What about the rest of the traps?”
“How many we set? Sixteen out of twenty? Not bad, considering the weather. We can take care of the rest later.”
“Just have to move quickly,” the second man agreed. “Better not travel in the dark.”
“Fine with me. We’ll just leave everything and go.”
Ereth, feeling quite satisfied with himself, retreated as far back under the tarpaulin as he could go.
For a
