Today's pics are of a porcupine - or rather, removing the quills from a porcupine. Take a block of styrofoam, impale the quills against the grain, and then they can be removed easily. There are lots of uses for these - in beadwork (as part of the art or as a needle) and other crafts. Currently, they fetch roughly 5-6$ an ounce on the fur market, and the guard hairs (those long yellow ones) are around 12-15$ an ounce. Neither one of these stacks up quickly, but if you consider the bait (or food - they can be tasty) value the porcupine has, and then add in the crafting value, they are worth chasing while you are already out there anyway.
Basically the entire body is covered with quills except for the legs down near the paws and the belly area... To simply look you wouldn't know it... they just look furry:
But pull back the hair and you get the idea. There's THOUSANDS of 'em... (ice chunk for reference this is the same spot as the pic above)
Take the foam, make sure your hands aren't sticking out over the sides, and go for it:
And then you can remove them easily..
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