Mysterious White Critter Turns Out To Be Young Albino Porcupine

Jul 22, 2019 by apost team

On July 16, the staff at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine noted a strange white creature. At first, they kept a wary distance from the animal, as they initially feared it might be a skunk.

Katie Orlando, the executive director at the museum, reported that some of her employees thought the white creature was not of this Earth – they speculated that it was a Tribble, a cuddly alien animal from “Star Trek.” Orlando posted a photograph of the animal taken by a volunteer at the museum on the museum’s Facebook page and asked for help in identifying it.

The caption under the photograph read, “We have a resident roaming turkey, woodchuck family, snapping turtle, bear, and now this little guy! We don’t know what he is … our first guess was albino skunk, but now we are thinking albino groundhog. Can any of our followers help us identify the newest addition to Seashore Wildlife Sanctuary?”

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The museum’s Facebook followers rose to the occasion and identified the fluffy white animal as an albino baby porcupine. It owed its fuzzy look to the fact that it was too young for its quills to have hardened.

While porcupines are common in Maine, albino porcupines are not. Researchers who work with porcupines at the Missouri Department of Conservation report that only one out 10,000 porcupines is born an albino.

The museum porcupine, however, isn’t the only albino porcupine in Maine. In December 2018, Greg Stand recorded a video of an albino porcupine with its normally colored mother in the Windham woods.

The staff at the Seashore Trolley Museum have decided to welcome the new arrival and have requested suggestions for a name. The most common suggestions have included Tribble and Herb, with the latter being the name of the volunteer who’d taken the animal’s picture. But eventually, the porcupine was called Marshmallow.

What do you think about this story? Have you ever seen an albino porcupine or any other albino animal? Let us know in the comments and be sure to pass this article along to your friends and family!