I hit the brakes in time to come to a graceful stop ten feet from a porcupine on North Raymond Road this evening. We only saw two porcupines last year, but this year they’re all over. Maybe I’m more tuned in to looking for them, but this one was in the middle of the road and hard to miss. When I first saw it at the limits of the headlights I thought it was a raccoon. Closer, there were black-and-white stripes so I thought skunk. That definitely made me want to brake hard! I hit a skunk once when I was in college, and you didn’t want to be in that car for the next week.