A Saskatchewan woman’s helping hand — or window scraper — has gone viral this week, with a video showing her assist a beleaguered porcupine garnering more than 1.2 million views on Facebook.

Raelene Prieb lives between Yorkton and Melville. She was on her way home on Monday when she spotted a porcupine in a turtle-like state, on its back and unable to get up. 

Prieb told CBC Radio’s The Morning Edition she knew right away she needed to give the clumsy creature a hand.

“I’m going to have to help him, clearly. He’s having a really bad Monday,” she said.

Rather than pick the prickly rodent up with her hands, she instead grabbed her window scraper. The porcupine grabbed on and managed to roll over. When the porcupine was upright, it looked at the snowbank, which had presumably felled it. It attempted to scale it.

“I didn’t know if I should kinda push him up [the snowbank],” Prieb said. “I didn’t really want to touch him.”

The critter’s attempt did not go well and it tumbled back onto its backside. Prieb once again helped it up, then used the same scraper to clear a path through the snowbank, allowing the animal to finally get on its merry way.

When Prieb got home, she uploaded the video to her Facebook profile unedited, unaware that the settings for the video were set to public.

The video blew up.

At one point, she excitedly told her daughter that it had more than 5,000 views. It has since eclipsed 1.2 million.

As for why she thinks the video is so popular, she said people are drawn to a feel-good story.

“People need to see compassion and mercy and grace out there,” Prieb said.