How can you deter porcupines from eating siding? Is one material less attractive to them than another?—Mike D., Manitoulin Island, Ont.
We can tell you which siding material is most attractive to them: plywood. “Porcupines are herbivores,” says Franco Mariotti, a biologist who worked for 32 years at Science North in Sudbury, Ont. “As such, they constantly crave salt, which usually is in low doses in plants.” The resins used to hold plywood together contain a lot of salt, so “it’s an easy source of that valuable commodity for a porcupine,” he says. Porkies crave sodium so much that they’ll chew on almost anything salty, including sweat-soaked leather gloves and outhouse walls sprayed with urine. Hey, we get it (well, not the urine part): after a week of salad, we totally want to hit up a drive-thru.
Wild Profile: Meet the porcupine
Assuming your siding is wood, Mike Tilley, the owner of Tilley’s Applewood Home Renovations in Guelph, Ont., suggests covering the lower portion of it with something that’s less chewable: metal. “I’d go at least three feet up,” he says. Of course, slapping new siding over the existing material could look pretty rough. If aesthetics are important to you, remove a portion of the old siding and replace it with several feet of new. By matching colour and texture, “you can blend in the new product,” says Tilley.
Another option is to deny the porcupine’s access to the siding, by covering the wood with heavy-duty wire such as hardware cloth. (Don’t bother with chicken wire, says Mariotti; he suspects the porcupines could chew in between the holes.) This simple fix might be enough to stop the porcupine from chowing down.
Hey, at least you don’t have porcupines denning below your place. “I’ve dealt with porcupines numerous times,” says Gary Ure of Second Nature Wildlife Management in Gananoque, Ont. “Last week, I had to pull a dead one out from underneath a cottage. Maggots were falling from it.”
Ugh, so gross. But somehow we’re still craving french fries.
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This article was originally published in the Winter 2024 issue of Cottage Life.
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