My grandfather used to shoot porcupines, mostly because they kept him awake at night by climbing into the rocking chairs on the veranda and gently rocking–a charming thing save that the chairs squeaked and something like that can get on your nerves.
One evening he stalked a porcupine into a tool shed, took aim, and hit an old bean pot and the bullet ricocheted and struck him a glancing blow to the head–which is to say “his” head. It was, of course, just a flesh wound, and no great damage was done, particularly to the porcupine who got away.
The porcupine had his revenge by dying of old age in his hideout under the floor of the tool shed–a circumstance discernible only gradually, then magnificently, for nothing smells quite like a dead porcupine in summer. My grandfather slowly and methodically pried up the floorboards while wearing a kerosene soaked rag over his nose. And of course with his scalp still bandaged from the bullet wound he looked like Boris Karloff in “The Mummy” but no one told him this for his ire was inflamed and we actually feared he might blow up the tool shed for he had a great affection for dynamite.
This is what one can generically call a true story. And starved for air, bilious with temper, chagrined at the autobiographical spectacle, my grandfather pried up board after board in the terrible shed, sweating and cursing. His mistake was to pry the boards in sequence. The damned thing was under the last board. And we, which is to say we of the man’s family thought this was particularly funny. That was my first lesson in the comedy of ill tempered method. Not long after, my grandfather blew up an outhouse, and that was my second lesson in the comedy of method. I will say this: the man had many methods. And he was a kind of New Hampshire genius. And nowadays it all seems so long ago…
Planet of the Blind 