Porcupine causes peak hour traffic jam

A porcupine seeking refuge from the rain caused mayhem in the city last week. It brought peak hour traffic on the R40 to a complete standstill.

Emerg-G-Med’s Martin Jeffrey last Wednesday responded to a call from a concerned member of the public. Thinking it might be an accident caused by the pouring rain and bad weather, he arrived at the location at about 16:30. However, he was pleasantly surprised, as well as at a loss of what to do.

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“A porcupine was walking across the R40 in the direction of West End when a car stopped, trying not to hit it,” Jeffrey explained. “Out of desperation for shelter, the porcupine then decided to take refuge under the car. Every time the car moved forward, the porcupine would just move with it.”

The incident happened during peak hour traffic.

There was a good number of cars travelling in that direction that were held up. The heavy rain also just started coming down, so everyone scrambled to get home as soon as possible,” Jeffrey said.

For a man who attended 13 accidents this previous weekend in similar weather, and who is used to seeing death and destruction on the roads, this incident was a breath of fresh air.

He added that even though he was trained to save lives, he was not sure how to handle this one and was afraid that he would get impaled by one of the porcupine’s quills.

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Johan Louw, nature conservation officer of the City of Mbombela, has dealt with similar cases many times before, so he knew exactly what to do.

He was called to the scene and the animal was caged and released at a nearby nature reserve.

Louw said that a number of porcupines reside in the city.

“They have no natural enemies in town, therefore there are quite a lot,” he said, and added that he believed that the animal called a storm water drain home, and had been flushed out by the water.

Jeffrey admitted that it was “just the cutest thing”, and that it was one of the happier stories he had seen in his line of work.