Forest Finds & Field Trips

By Cara Davenport, Education Manager

This spring, during an exploration activity with the 6th graders from Mettawee Community School at Merck Forest, one of the students discovered a porcupine quill in the leaf litter on the forest floor. As more students began to scour the area, more and more quills were found and set aside. The resulting pile was made up of quills that ranged from a half-inch to 3 inches, all ivory colored and with one end dark brown to black, almost like they had each been held to a flame and charred. There were plenty of questions and theories about what might have led to all these quills being left behind in one place like this- “Do porcupines shed?” “Are all these quills from the same porcupine?” “Why are they different sizes?” “Did something try to attack the porcupine here?” “Is the porcupine still here?!” This last question was quickly followed by a number of students freezing and jerking their heads back to glance up into the tree branches over our heads, in case the owner of the quills was still lurking above us.

A few other stars of our explorations over the course of this spring’s field trip season were salamanders and Jack-in-thePulpits; the former often appearing as students lifted logs to reveal cool and dark spaces perfect for moisture-loving amphibians, the latter usually overlooked until the top ‘hood’ of the central tubular leaf was lifted to reveal contrasting green and purple stripes and a purple stalk in the middle. A few years ago one I heard one student describe this stalk as a “tongue,” and ever since then I haven’t been able to look at a Jack-in-the-Pulpit without imagining that it might suddenly start speaking to me or launch into song.