A prickly encounter

The duty rotas stayed the same regardless of any bad weather interruptions, so today I was back at the lookout. As we drove back to base, we encountered a South African or Cape porcupine. This species is primarily nocturnal and quite elusive, and the individual we saw was obviously not pleased to encounter our vehicle. Before I could take a photograph, it trotted head first into a thorny shrub, leaving us with nothing but a quite well-disguised view of its rear end.