Encounters of the prickly kind

My latest thing to try to photograph at night is the ISS (International Space Station). Caught it tonight cutting across the Big Dipper.












Ater the ISS had passed by, I headed over to another spot to see what the stars were doing where there was a thin film of clouds, thought maybe Jupiter would be over the pines. Good thing I had my flashlight, or I might have tripped over this porcupine.

At first he (she?) took off into the cattails at the shore, and I headed over to another part of the lawn to set up the camera and tripod. After a few minutes I heard noises, it was coming towards me, making a "hmmmm hmmmm" strange nasally kind of call. It came over and sniffed the tripod leg, and when I said "Well??" it took off again. I moved about 30 feet to another spot, and saw the porkie way off in the flashlight beam. I started to imitate the noise it was making, and it came trotting over to investigate. When I snapped pictures the flash made it move back, but I kept making the noise and it kept sniffing around. You can see by the picture of porkie sniffing at my shoe how close it came.