We had a large pineapple patch at a demo garden here, that was started from a garbage bag of free tops donated by the grocery store. Used to harvest quite a few edible fruits from it, too.
When I grew a nice one a few years ago, the same thing happened as Lin except I know who did it, a raccoon! One day just as the fruit was getting to smell wonderful I came out to the garden to find it with a big area chewed out of one side. I sprinkled cayenne pepper all around the plant but, the next day more was gone, and by the 3rd day it was eaten right down to the stem. Must have been a really good one. I did re-plant the top.
My conclusion from that is, if you plant enough of the thorny, spiny plants, the ones in the middle of the bunch will bear fruit for you, and the ones on the outside will feed the critters.
Tarev, as far as hardiness goes, I have three plants going now that survived our two cold winters, 2009 and 2010. Now the biggest plant has a little pineapple on it. Took it 3 years, where usually it's only 2, though. So probably the first cold winter set the plant back a year from setting fruit. I haven't had to use the over-ripe fruit trick because my pineapples are under a big live oak tree that drops leaves into the pineapple, so it gets the decomp gases naturally, I guess.
