Bert Tuhudy, age 22, of Milwaukee,Wisconsin, for his question:

Does a porcupine damage the forest?

Sad to say, this is quite true. Mr. Prickles is very destructive of forest trees. He is a vegetarian and, in the winter time, when he cannot get grass, he feeds on tree bark. He is a rodent, which means he has strong gnawing teeth. And during a night he can gnaw away the bark around the basos of six or eight trees.

Trees need their bark dust as we need skin. When the bark is removed completely around the trunk a tree perishes, We hate to see a beautiful forest tree destroyed and, to a lumber man, this is very wasteful.

The destruction of a tree is also a tragedy to countless little forest; creatures. To them. it was home, a kind of apartment house. Insects lived in its bark, a woodpecker used it as a restaurant, a chipmunk spent the winter between its roots, a squirrel had a nest high in its leafy boughs and many birds built nests in its branches. The porcupine who destroyed the tree was a very unpopular fellow, indeed.