Porcupine quills

Quills

• A North American porcupine has over 30,000 quills.

  Source: San Diego Zoo

• Quills are modified hairs made of keratin, the same stuff as our hair and fingernails.

  Source: San Diego Zoo

• Porcupines cannot shoot their quills.

  Source: San Diego Zoo

• A baby porcupine (a porcupette) has soft, bendable quills that harden over its first few days. Tiny muscles at the base of each quill let it stand up when the porcupine is excited or alarmed.

  Source: San Diego Zoo

In The Quillers, "quills up" means a feeling, and "quills smooth" means calm. Real porcupines raise their quills when they are excited or alarmed.

Porcupines in California

• In California, porcupines have lived mostly in the north and in the mountains and plateaus: the Klamath Mountains, the southern Cascades, the Modoc Plateau and the Sierra Nevada. Records are mostly northern, and they live in low numbers.

  Sources: California Dept of Fish and Wildlife; California Department of Food and Agriculture

Where they live

In California the records are mostly from the north and the Sierra Nevada. The Quillers live in a story canyon at Sandpiper Point. We do not say that real porcupines live at the beach or in a coastal canyon.

In the stories

In Quill Line, quills go up when the quillers are prickly and smooth when they are calm. Each book has a porcupine fact in the back.

• Quill LineMade for 4 to 6 years
• The Great Canyon PicnicMade for 4 to 7 years