OLIVEREA, NY, May 30, 2000 (CNN [Catskill News Network]) –-- In this

small upstate New York community, where doors are seldom locked,

residents are on edge after hearing that their easy co-existence

with nature, a source of pride hereabouts, is being threatened by

a heretofore unassuming foe.

     Scott Taylor, of Eagle Mountain House, the Catskills estate

of prominent Albany attorney Gayle Yeomans, reports that his 1997

Ford pickup has been eaten by a porcupine. “I could hardly

believe my ears,” said Taylor, when he received the news from

Keith Landerway, an assistant service manager at Johnson Ford in

Kingston.

     Mr. Taylor had scheduled a service appointment for Tuesday

with Mr. Landerway to identify a problem in the emissions system

of the truck which had caused a warning light on the dash to

illuminate.  Last Friday night, however, the results of the

clandestine work of the nefarious rodent began to reveal

themselves, and rendered the 5,000 pound vehicle inoperable.

     “Miss Yeomans and I arrived at her estate in her limousine

much later than we had anticipated, largely due to the fact that

she was driving, the license of her regular driver not being

valid for the class of vehicle. What with the late hour and Miss

Yeomans being fatigued from driving, we decided to order a pizza

from Phoenicia rather than fix a proper supper. I hopped in the

truck to go get the pizza and noticed right off that it started

kinda hard. The fumes were pretty heavy but I figured that the

engine was running rich on account of whatever the emissions

problem was - that as soon as the engine warmed up it would

straighten out.”

     As he neared Phoenicia, the low fuel warning light came on.

This caused no small alarm to Mr. Taylor, who relates that his

tank had been half-full when he came down off of Eagle Mountain.

“I knew it had to be a leak,” he said. “There’s no way you could

run gas through an engine that fast.”  He was able to make it to

the Exxon station in Phoenicia, where he discovered gasoline

cascading from beneath the truck and clouds of volatile,

combustible vapors rising from the hot exhaust system. “Well, it

doesn’t take me long to look at a horseshoe and I’ll tell you,

mister, it didn’t take me any time at all to shut her down.”  He

pushed the truck to an adjacent parking space.  “Didn’t dare

start ‘er up to move her,” he said, “for fear of sparks.”

     On Saturday morning, the pickup suffered the indignity of

having to piggyback on a flatbed to show up - three days early -

for the scheduled appointment at Johnson’s.

     This afternoon, Mr. Taylor, a trust administrator for an Ivy

League institution in New York City, received a call from Mr.

Landerway reporting the technician’s diagnosis. “I’ll give Keith

credit,” said Taylor. “He told me he was trying very hard not to

laugh and asked my forgiveness if I could hear him smiling over

the phone. He told me I wouldn’t like the news, but he hoped

someday I’d be able to laugh about it, too.”

     “It was a porcupine,” Mr. Landerway told Taylor, and went on

to recite a litany of the damage. It seems the prickly pest did

not stop at gnawing through the metal-armored fuel line. It also

chewed through several wiring harnesses and gnawed at, but did

not puncture, the spare tire and one of the brake lines. For all

that, however, the most shocking news was yet to come.

     Mr. Landerway reported that the undercoating had been almost

entirely stripped from beneath the truck. Tooth and scratch marks

were clearly visible on the expanse of exposed sheet metal and

frame rails. Preliminary estimates of the damage are in excess of

one thousand dollars.

     “You can imagine,” said Taylor, “I was pretty well

numbstruck.  I lived in Maine for about sixteen years, and you’d

hear stories about porkies gnawing on tires and brake lines and

the like - they’re attracted by the road salt that the rubber

picks up.  But I never heard of anything like this.”

     Mr. Landerway said that the repair estimate did not include

restoring the undercoating, a service that, because of

environmental restrictions, is no longer performed by dealers.

Even in dealers’ body shops, fenders and other body parts are

received already undercoated from the factory. “Most of the

damage at least made sense, but I couldn’t imagine anything that

would try any more than the first mouthful of undercoating, “said

Taylor. Mr. Landerway’s explanation, however, building on the

environmental concerns that caused dealers to abandon after-

market undercoating treatment, has raised an alarm among local

residents. In response to those concerns, Ford Motor Company made

changes which place every rural owner of a Ford product in

imminent peril of a sudden and nasty demise.  Instead of the

traditional coal- or petroleum-based undercoating formula, which requires

the use of volatile solvents both in the application and in the

auto-recycling process, Ford switched to a material using, of all

things, pine tar.

     “I can’t believe it!” exclaims an incredulous Taylor.  “Ford

has grown so reliant on marketing their light trucks and SUVs to

the urban cowboys and soccer moms that they’ve completely

forgotten that those vehicles - especially the trucks - will be

used on farms and woodlots.  Imagine it! They build ‘em ‘Ford

Tough’ and then coat the exposed underbelly with porcupine bait!

They’re Ford Tough alright when they’re underway, but do you

suppose it ever occurred to those engineers in Detroit that you

gotta park ‘em sometime?”

     Mr. Taylor is resigned to repairing the damage, buttressed

by the hope that his insurance will cover part of the cost. He is

still concerned, however, about the future of both his truck and

the quality of life in the Oliverea valley.

     “Life is nice up here, and the wildlife is a large part of

that.” He relates the story of the summer evening when he

encountered a skunk in the kitchen of Eagle Mountain House.

“Thank God,” he said, “Gayle wasn’t home. It was a warm night and

I’d propped the back door open to catch the breeze off the

mountain. I was watching ‘I Love Lucy’ re-runs on Nick at Nite

when I heard this munching sound from out in the kitchen where

the cat’s dish is. Problem was that the cat was comatose on the

chesterfield. I tiptoed out to the kitchen and who should I find

but Mr. Broadstripe nose deep in the cat food. I watched for a

minute before I started up this little clucking noise that

Monsieur LePew politely took as the cue for his departure, which

was uneventful and, thankfully, prompt.”

     “I know we have porkies up here,” Taylor continued. He has

encountered them under a shed attached to the manor house and

around a wood rack near the rear entry to the kitchen. “I’ve had

a tough time persuading Gayle that they won’t do her any harm.

Somewhere along the line she’d picked up on the old myth that a

porky will throw his quills when he feels threatened.  Every time

the subject has come up, I’ve always fallen back on what I’d

thought was the truth of the matter, that you’d be hard-pressed

to find a critter any less aggressive than a porky.  They’re just

as happy to be left alone.  Now though?  I don’t know what to

think.”

     The naked aggression of the porcupine that ate Mr. Taylor’s

truck has caused him to rethink his attitude. He consulted with

Patricia Rudge, the warden and conservation officer whose

territory includes Eagle Mountain. Ms. Rudge suggested several

tactics intended to either repel or distract the killer rodent.

“I can appreciate where she’s coming from,” Mr. Taylor said, “but

I don’t know that scattering mothballs around my truck will keep

the varmints away any better than they keep the woodchucks out of

the rose bed. Her idea of leaving a scrap of plywood laying

around, thinking they’ll find it tastier than my truck, makes

some sense, but I can’t say I’m real enthused about anything that

encourages then to hang around. Besides, the way this one eats,

he’d buzz through a sheet of plywood like a wood chipper and

still be hungry.  Seems to me a trap and a liberal application of

12-gauge rodent repellent is the best answer.”

     In the vain hope that the Ford Motor Company might help

cover the cost of the repairs, Mr. Taylor called the

manufacturer’s customer relations office. “The young lady was

sympathetic enough,” Taylor said, “but she wasn’t able to find

any reference to porcupines in her customer service database.

She put me on hold for a minute.  I don’t know if she was

checking with a supervisor or just checking to make sure she had

porcupine spelled right. Anyway, when she came back, she allowed

as how Ford wasn’t going to be able to help me out.”

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