Here's the Homeward Bound reboot for 2025. A porcupine accidentally ended uo more than 500 miles from its habitat after stowing away on a wrecked plane.
According to the Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society, the porcupine stowed away on a wrecked plane in Kelowna, British Columbia. A helicopter, boat, and trailer then transported the plane to an industrial yard. That was 537 miles away.
It explained, "Never a dull moment at Interior Wildlife! We were asked to extract a young female porcupine from a plane wreck. It had hitched a ride during wreck recovery and was accidentally transported by helicopter, boat and trailer from Mackenzie all the way to Kelowna! Unlike marmots, who are known to hitch car rides in BC - a "porcupine in a plane" was a different displacement story."
Porcupine Rescued
The porcupine hid from people, stowed away at the front of the plane. It finally made itself known. It explained, "This adventurous young animal was hidden below the pilot's seat and started poking its head out when workers of a local wreck recovery company were going to unload the wreckage from their flat deck trailer in Kelowna."
Typically, the organization doesn't handle capturing animals. But it made a special exception given the situation of the porcupine.
It explained, "Usually we don't have enough resources to capture wild animals ourselves, instead we ask to be contacted before we give instructions on how and when the finder can safely catch/trap. And transport wildlife in need to us. In this case, however, the animal was hundreds of kilometres away from its home. And the possibility of loosing it amongst a lot of aircraft parts in an industrial yard where it would be disoriented, find nothing to eat and crawl into another machine or vehicle was quite real, the workers feared."
Despite the risk of it running off, they managed to finally tranq and capture the porcupine, saving its life.
It wrote, "It was very scared and didn't make any attempts to leave it's hiding spot of the past 3 days. They tried to coax and lure it out once they realized their blind passenger, but to no avail. That's when the team at Interior Wildlife was asked to assist. With the help of our supporting veterinarian we lightly sedated the porcupine via intramuscular injection into the rear end. (The only spot we could get to it was through the small plane window). We then pulled it out gently by the front arms a few minutes later, no quills shed. Safe for the humans involved and the animal itself."
