The Sudden Appearance of Polly

She appeared just before sunset on an early August day, a dark mound in the twilight, the shape of a small shrub or a tussock of grass. Stepping out onto the front porch that evening to admire the darkening sky, it took me a minute to process what I was seeing: a porcupine right outside our front door.

            Jeff!” I hollered. “Where’s Rosie?” I’d heard plenty of tales of local pups getting a nose full of quills. Immensely painful, and often requiring an expensive trip to the vet.

The porcupine responded to my shout by sliding under the porch. Seriously?

            On our land here in Maine we’d seen (and seen signs of) deer and fox and groundhogs and coyotes, plus birds and rodents galore. One of the trails through our front meadow is traversed by a two-inch deep, exceedingly narrow trench: a mini-wildlife crossing, made by countless small feet. Rosie, our Australian sheepdog, had once been sprayed by a skunk in our side yard. So we’re well accustomed to the presence of nature’s critters. But a porcupine under the porch where I stood?

            I went inside and closed the door. Rosie looked at me expectantly, her ears up, ready to play. “Don’t even think about it,” I said.

            Jeff was suddenly behind me. He opened the door and stepped onto the porch. “Don’t—” I started. Don’t what? Corner the porcupine? Might it shoot its quills at us? But the diminutive animal had come out and was making its way slowing along the front of the house, its back to us. It was small and dark, darker than I’d expected. A baby, perhaps a few months old, and beautiful. Its quills lay smoothly against its body, like elaborate, trailing fringe. At the moment it posed no threat to us (though I kept a close eye on Rosie). “Maybe it’s leaving,” I said, my voice a little wistful.

            It was not leaving. Nor did it show any signs of wanting to leave. It crawled under a bush, one with especially dense, low hanging branches.

            By the next morning we’d read enough to ascertain that we were not in danger of having quills shot at us. This was not something she could do. (We’d decided, with absolutely no evidence, that our visitor was female.) And she was so small and cute! Her face was very dark. For some reason I’d assumed it would be pink. She seemed to regard me with one eye, rather than turning her head to see me with both—hoping, perhaps, that I’d disappear if she didn’t pay me much attention.

“She’s adorable!” Jeff kept saying. She seemed darker than many of the online pictures we found. It was likely that this was her first summer.

            We didn’t see her consistently. At last light she’d suddenly be in the side yard, munching on clover around the vegetable beds. She never bothered the vegetables we’d planted.

            We couldn’t help ourselves: A part of us wanted to keep her or, rather, to find a way to coexist with her. Evenings we’d watch her quietly from a window or side porch, taking stealthy peeks at her (though she must have known from our scent that we were there). What was the harm in letting her hang out with us for a while?

            But wild animals, especially young ones that grow accustomed to a human presence, may not learn what they need to know to live in the wild. And honestly, it was only a matter of time before Rosie and Polly met nose to quills. One afternoon while Polly was out and about, lumbering along, Jeff followed her slowly with the riding lawn mower, hoping to nudge her out of the yard and into the tall grass of our front meadow; hoping that then she’d move on. Polly responded by climbing the little sugar maple in the front yard with astounding dexterity. A quick few movements and she was at the top. Jeff put the mower away and Polly climbed down, tail first.

            Reluctantly I called a friend and asked to borrow his Have-A-Heart trap. We live across the road from a 30-acre wildlife management area, and we knew Polly would be better off there. But what should we bait the trap with? Fruit? Vegetables? Peanut butter?

            “They like salty things,” Jeff said after some online reading. That evening he dropped a few apples slices, coated with salt, in the yard to see if she’d nibble on them. They remained untouched. I suggested trying some peanut butter. No luck. Jeff put out some salted apples a second time. In the morning these showed signs of teeth marks. Progress! (though we knew it may simply have been mice).

            That evening we baited the trap with salt-covered apple slices. No luck. The next night passed too with nary a nibble. I began to suspect she was smarter than us. This, of course, further endeared her to us.

            My cousin and her husband arrived from Virginia for a visit, and our attention turned elsewhere, though the baited trap remained in the yard. Stepping outside the third morning after we’d set it, not fully awake, I rounded the corner of the house and saw a dark shaped in the trap.

            “Jeff!” I shouted, “we caught Polly!”

            “What?” Suddenly everyone was up, and Jeff was out the door. He was stopped in his tracks by an odor he didn’t like at all.

            We hadn’t trapped Polly. We’d trapped a skunk.

            Now comes the moment where we find ourselves extremely grateful to live in the era of YouTube.

            The online videos all offered basically the same advice: Approach the trap talking softly, stooping low to minimize your height (and therefore the threat to the animal). Take something—a towel, a blanket, a tarp—and throw it carefully over the trap, talking calmly to the skunk all the while (calmly?). If the animal stomps its feet or raises its tail, back off! I was glad we had a bottle of skunk removal potion on hand, though I’d bought it for Rosie, not us.

            What should we do once we had the trap covered? Open the door? One video recommended using a long pole to try to lever the trap open. Another fellow assured us there would be no danger in picking it up and moving it, once the trap was covered. “I’ve had five or six skunks in my truck bed at once,” he bragged. Good for you, buddy, I thought.

            The day was growing hot; we couldn’t wait any longer. Jeff moved slowly toward front of the trap, holding two towels at the ready. I circled around the back, nervously singing a soft “Hey little skunk, hey little skunk, we are going to help you.” The skunk did not look convinced. But neither did it stomp its feet or raise its tail. As it studied me, Jeff slid the towels over the the trap.

            No sound emerged, or scent.

            Now what?

            “I’m going to open it,” Jeff said softly.

            “Are you sure?” I was still talking in my calm, singsong voice, which sounded, frankly, ridiculous. But our plan, I thought, had been to pick up the trap and take it into the tall grass before opening it.

            Jeff didn’t respond, just leaned in slowly to spring the door. When it opened, he backed off to the side.

            The skunk came cautiously out, made its way along the side of the house, and ducked under our back porch.

            Fortunately, we haven’t seen it since. Or Polly.

            And yes, we miss her.

That’s not Polly, above, but it’s a close look-alike! Pixabay photo by jggrz

Replacement

Last Saturday afternoon, after much mulling and stalling, I headed over to the local high school for an emergency caucus organized by Maine Democrats. In a gymnasium festooned with sports banners—Eagles Girls Softball. Eagles Boys Wrestling.—a couple hundred folks were chatting excitedly, gesticulating or sunk into the arm-crossed pose of those waiting their turn to speak. They were almost all white, like most of Maine, and they were disproportionally old.

            I’d never been to a political function like this—and, it turned out, neither had anyone else here. There had never been a need. The sudden, sodden withdrawal of Graham Platner from the race for the U.S. Senate had left the state Democratic party with a gaping hole. Who could possibly match the level of energy and charisma Platner had brought to the race? And who had the gumption and credentials to take on veteran Republican Senator Susan Collins?

            Platner was a phenom: passionate, charismatic, eloquent on the stump. People who’d seen him speak often described it as a pivotal experience. Here was someone who understood their struggles, who had experienced the same challenges they faced, with fresh ideas for leveling America’s much-tilted playing field. Someone who understood what it was like to feel shut out of the system. Who'd take their concerns to Washington and fight for change. The unraveling of his candidacy was as disappointing a political story as I’ve ever heard. People believed in him, until credible accounts of abuse at his hands showed him to be as deeply flawed as he was charismatic.

            With Platner’s withdrawal, Maine Democrats had no choice but to hold an emergency, state-wide caucus to choose a replacement. There were plenty of impressive candidates. But none could match Platner’s electrifying presence. And so here we were, wondering how to revive the energy of what had been a truly exciting campaign.

            A brief word about Maine’s sitting senator Susan Collins, against whom Platner had run. She’d served as a senator from Maine since 1997. As chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she could, and had, brought plenty of bacon to the state. She’d be tough to beat, regardless of who faced her. Factor in the many-million-dollar war chest she’s amassed for this year’s campaign and you can see how high a bar she’s set.

Collins has the reputation of a political moderate, yet she frequently votes with President Trump’s base—while publicly wringing her hands in dismay at the changes he has wrought. She did vote against the Big Beautiful Bill passed last year (which cut numerous poverty programs, including food stamps and SNAP benefits). But here’s the rub: She cast one of the deciding votes to move that bill out of committee, where it was stalled. At the time she said she wanted to amend it, once it came before the full Senate. But her proposed change found no traction. 

And so the BBB passed and became law.

I should note here that I’m not a political writer and have no desire to become one. Still, standing in that gym, watching my neighbors engaged in spirited conversation, I had the sense of being part of something powerful and hopeful and corporate in the best sense of that word. Of a community fighting for the democratic way of life we’d grown up with—and that many of us had largely taken for granted.

In the weeks after Platner’s demise, a dozen candidates had filed to run for the seat. Several had since dropped out, narrowing our choices. Now our voices echoed off the gym walls.

“Who are you for?”

“I’m not sure. You?”

“We’ve got to choose someone who can cross political lines!”

“Yes! Who can win in the Second District”—the state’s most conservative region, with its North Woods communities of loggers. Platner had made solid inroads there. We needed someone to pick up that momentum.

“Shah can do that! He’s widely respected.” This referred to Nirav Shah, who had served as the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control during the pandemic.

“I don’t know. He’s from away.”

“But he’s known, and he did a really good job then.”

Others were touting the local appeal of Troy Jackson, a life-long Mainer. From Aroostook County, Maine’s northernmost and most rural, he’d grown up as what his campaign bills as “a poor kid in a town of poor kids.” His mom was 16 when he was born. His political creds include serving as the president of the Maine Senate.

I was intrigued by Jackson but wasn’t sure who to support. I was thinking that I wished I could see him in action when I heard someone say “Look—he’s here!”

And there he was, a sizable man with a ball cap and jeans and a bit of a droopy smile, standing on the sidelines, feet apart, arms crossed and belly out in what to me looked like a classic trucker’s stance.

I was seated with a group from my own village, all of us exclaiming over how unusual this whole process was. At once sad and exciting. I stood halfway up to better see Jackson. He’d been ambushed by folks when he walked in, but now there weren’t many people gathered around him  “I’m going to go talk to him!” I said.

“Really?” This from the neighbor beside whom I was sitting. He’d just commented that he didn’t much trust Jackson. In years past Jackson had voted against bills that would have protected women’s rights and abortion access.

“Why not?” I said. “C’mon!”

The voting was about to start. We were to each mark a ballot selecting the delegates we wanted to send to the party's upcoming state nominating convention. Some delegates had already pledged to support specific candidates. Others had not. Jackson was standing alone on the sidelines of the gym. I trotted up to him, my neighbor following. “Hi!” I said. He turned to me.

“I want to know,” my neighbor said, “given your past record, why I should trust you to vote for women’s issues that you haven’t supported in the past.”

If Jackson was surprised by the question, he showed no sign. “I’ve learned a lot,” he said simply. “There are definitely some votes I regret. Really.” He continued on a bit, even as a moderator called for quiet, for the crowd to settle into their seats and begin marking ballots.

I wanted to quiz him more closely, but there wasn’t time. We returned to our seats and opened links on our phones, to the online ballot that would determine which delegates would go to the nominating convention July 25th. There a challenger from the Democratic party would be chosen to face Susan Collins in November.

There were so many delegates listed! Suddenly I felt spectacularly unprepared. But I’d done some reading, and my neighbor shared his handwritten notes of which delegates had pledged to support which candidates, if any. I worked down the list, marked my choices, and hit SEND.

I wished them all luck. I admired them for their willingness to step into a process that’s become so fraught. May their efforts go far toward building liberty and justice for all, once and for all, in this great, troubled land.