Once upon a time in a land not too distant from here there was a forest. In this forest there lived a porcupine. He was a gnarled up old and grumpy porcupine.
Every someone said “hello” to him he would glare at them and shuffle along. If anyone dared ask “how do you do” he would fume, and if anyone tried to get close to him he would turn his back to them and charge them, running backward, trying to stick his quills into them. Worse still he would dig in their gardens and eat all their fruit and leave a mess behind him.
No-one ever dared tell him, but when he charged back first he looked rather comic. He had stuck himself to trees and other unfortunate pieces of shrubbery quite a number of times, but no-one dared to laugh.
One day Porcupine was waling along quietly minding his own business when he heard a small squeaking voice just next to him. It asked “hello, how are you?” Porcupine glanced to his side and saw Squirrel happily keeping up with him. He turned his back on Squirrel, hoping to deter Squirrel from following, and carried on walking.
“What fine whiskers you have, I bet they are very sensitive.” Porcupine jumped in surprise. Squirrel was walking just to his left and looking at him. This annoyed Porcupine so he turned away, he added a small flourish so that some of his quills might prickle Squirrel.
As Porcupine was moving along, feeling a little proud of himself for the flourish, he noticed Squirrel was still following him and worse, Squirrel was unprickled. The annoyance Porcupine had felt earlier flared into anger, he swung his backside around and charged full speed at Squirrel. But there was Squirrel in front of him, he swung around again.
“What a fun game” he heard a small voice say with a giggle. There right next to Porcupine was Squirrel running backwards! Squirrel’s tail fluffed and the silly little creature looked ridiculous. Porcupine was flabbergasted. He stopped charging. Squirrel looked up at him expectantly. Oh, the insolence! Porcupine swung around again, and again he charged, putting all his energy into it.
Squirrels are very fast and so Squirrel easily dodged. The next thing Porcupine heard was “Weeeee…”, this puzzled him and so he slowed down and began to look around. There was Squirrel beside him, running backward with her tail in her face. Porcupine had to stop. That was absurd, why would Squirrel do that? So he asked.
“I was doing what you did, quite a fun game. I would not have thought of it myself.” Squirrel replied. Porcupine hotly told Squirrel that it was not, in fact, a game but rather a defence mechanism employed by porcupines, on account of their having quills on their backs. Squirrels have fluffy tails and so running backwards is unlikely to prove an effective countermeasure to attack.
“Oh.” Said Squirrel. “But it looked so silly that it had to be a game, and the getting stuck in things, I could not do that. That must be fun for picking fruit or stretching your back, although, I’m not sure how you would get the fruit off afterword…Anyway it looked like fun so I joined in.”
Porcupine felt abashed (Squirrel kept on chattering). He did not know how to deal with this little talkative creature who would not leave him alone and, worst of all, was not scared of him. Usually the other animals moved out of his way, or at the least ignored him. They had even stopped trying to greet him. He was surprised to find that he regretted this.
“…anyway you’re not as bad as they say. I thought you were quite fun. Oh, oh oh, I know what you could do! You could live in a tunnel, that way when you go in no one can follow, and you don’t have to worry about your quills knocking everything over, that could work right? But I suppose it would be a little cramped…”
Porcupine smiled. He had a friend. From that day on Porcupine stated to become more friendly to all the creatures, he also stopped destroying the others gardens and eating their fruit. He even planted a little garden of his own and used his fine whiskers and digging to do some rather interesting things there.
And so the forest was a little more beautiful thanks to the kind persistence of Squirrel who showed Porcupine the he didn’t have to be grumpy.