Chapter 4

Being such a charismatic alpha-male, I never have lacked for female attention and pretty early on I started to fairly frequently alter my DNA (although I didn’t have any words to think about it with way back then) in order to not overwhelm the gene-pool with extra copies. I would optimize a current copy of the host species for passing on genetically to my progeny to allow for survival trait selections.

Ok, I also selected for aesthetics, I always have appreciated beauty and tried to find enjoyment in existence. Living streamlines life to it’s environment and purpose, but being beautiful as well is just because life is beautiful, and appreciates it’s self.

Since my presence is so powerful, I have to shutter and filter the full effect with most people. I have always been a solitary being, any companionship transient and fleeting due to the nature of time and the cycle of life.

I search out women with strong or enduring natures, who won’t totally surrender if I reveal a bit more of the depth of my experience. I can be a wee bit overpowering at times. I leave them before I inadvertently irrevocably mold and shape them to suit my own preferences, just by the weight of my regard.

Following my pattern of rising up near the top strata of society I found my powerful and enduring women there also, and while harems were no longer the norm yet networks of girlfriends and business associates functioned in much the same way. I was skilled with relating with and remaining on friendly terms with all my various liaisons, even with adding in the occasional pregnancies. It only took a short while to determine if a potential sexual partner had enough depth of character or sense of self to keep my interest and if not I didn’t pursue that aspect of interaction. I remained friendly though, since certainly they had friends and co-workers I might meet.

The old joke asks “how do porcupines make love?” I have to tell you, that at least for me, I was always smitten to the tips of my quills. Love at first sight, or even before that, at first whiff. My most tender romantic feelings have coursed through a prickly exterior. I was a big old softy at heart.

I was a nasty beast otherwise, with selective dose poison delivery from paralyzingly painful jelly cell stings to instantly lethal, just a matter of degree. So I left my quills without barbs and didn’t jettison them. I was handsome and attractive to the lady ‘pines, and the other males knew not to mess with me and my territory, which was prime and where ever I wanted it to be.

I was pretty oblivious to how I threw my weight around, that’s just how things were, and are. It’s because porcupines are solitary, and I didn’t have to fit in a social group. I was much nicer as a herd or pack animal although I still always got my own way, pretty much.

The truth was, I hardly used my ‘extras’ at all as I was so skilled socially, and I could see why some had fallen away from the evolutionary stir as ever more successful survival tactics emerged. I mostly kept them because it was my own little way of hoarding. Like the boy-scout keeping his compass in his pocket for fifty years, just in case- and never using it once.