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It is armadillo season !!!!
William81
Member Posts: 25,350 ✭✭✭✭
It has been in the 50's the last couple of days and my bride and I were out looking for an old cemetery. We drove near a friend's place and there was an armadillo running near the road by one of his buildings....I could not get a good angle on it before it ducked into it's hole or I would have shot it...As soon as I got out of the truck he headed for his burrow under the corner of the building.
Send my buddy a pic...he said he will be waiting for it tomorrow !!
I guess I better check my place out too....
Comments
Are they a real nuisance?
...Ive not seen any to speak of on the road yet...when they come out in force there are a lot of them smushed on the roads...make a big bump and a heck of a noise when you run over them armored critters...except for their burrow,they dig little funnel shaped holes when looking for bugs to eat, big at the top and small at the bottom to acomadate their little snout...if you have grubs the yard and they find 'em, you may have little craters everywhere...hey, they have to eat too...😊
Depends on what warm is. I saw one last fall smashed, well not smashed but DRT, on I-40 just east of Asheville, NC.
Temps can get pretty chilly there.
They can be a pest if they dig up your yard, after those grubs, so many of my neighbors routinely eliminate them in the "hood." The favored elimination device around here seems to be .410 bore shotguns. We're in the city limits but no one seems to care about local armadillo disposal. I don't have much of a lawn so consequently don't persecute armadillos.
We see them at the ranch all the time and we've always left them alone. We kinda have an "eat what you shoot and only shoot what you intend to eat" mentality. I've heard tales of armadillos being eaten but I've never been that hungry. I recently read, however, that armadillos can be pretty devastating on ground-nesting birds through egg predation. We're just starting to get quail back after an absence of a few years so we may reconsider our "leave armadillos alone" policy.
They are (would be) ridiculously easy to kill. We can generally get within 10 to 15 feet of them before they seem aware of us.
have never seen one in the wild
but around here we have the non armored nuisance version opossum's ( but then agaiin its the only marsupial we have in the USA from I have been told they carry the young in a pouch like a kangaroo )
we ( as in me ) have several skunks living here on the place they don't bother us and share the place out side with the cats and chickens , they do dig small divots on occasion looking for grubs
I have been coming down to this area of Missouri for over 45 years. About 10 years ago when we took over the farm, we were still not seeing any. About 7 to 8 years ago we started to see dead ones on the road from time to time. They started showing up on my game cameras then also.
Last summer I killed two in my yard....they are a problem as they burrow in places around the farm. I tripped over one of them opening day of hunting season and fell down hard. If I had hit it just right I would have dropped in about two to three feet and snapped a leg for sure. There seem to be more of them all the time...
Usually we only see them when it is warm out. This is the first time I have seen one this time of year...
It is always, and I do mean ALWAYS, Armadillo season!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you can't feel the music; it's only pink noise!
Here in southeast Missouri when I was growing up (60's and 70's) they were in Arkansas. After I left home they crossed the border and have become plentiful.
Quick fact is that armadillos on the road typically die due to their startle reflex. You drive over them and miss them with the tires and straddle them. They startle, leap and bash themselves against your undercarriage.
I have shot them, and I have captured and relocated them. I prefer the latter.
Did you know they can swim? This one I released on the dam road around a reservoir. It had a choice to go into the woods or into the lake. It went into the lake and swam away.
The problem for me is I live where folks would release one if they caught it !!!
Never seen one except in pictures. I think they look prehistorically COOL!
Have read they can transmit Leprosy. Wonder if there is any truth to that?
Possum on the half-shell.
Texas hill country around Lampasas, it is common to see around 50 a day driving down dirt roads or on horseback. Ranchers consider them pests. Years ago was able to hunt for free on a friends ranch as long as every armadillo we encountered ceased to exist.
It came out. But did it see its shadow? That's the important thing.
In the Depression, they were facetiously called "Hoover pig" because they were often eaten as the only source of meat available.
Very cold temperatures thinned them out in NE Oklahoma last winter.
Really a nuisance when they get in yard digging up rocks.
Even more so if they get lead poison and die close to the house, up wind.
They seem to be a favorite meal of the Buzzards.
Armadillo moms always birth litters of four, always identical quadruplets, all the same sex. So, when we start having trouble with them here, and we find one juvenile, we know there are three more just like it. Last litter we dealt with here, I shot one, my neighbor shot one, and I relocated two.
They are also very fragile. A lady had one rooting up her flower bed. I grabbed it up by the tail and walked over to the road. Then I tossed it underhand to the other side of the road, figuring it would run away. It hit the ground, WHUMP! And it did not move. It was graveyard dead!
Lady said, "I didn't mean for you to kill it."
I said, "I didn't mean to kill it. I didn't know they broke so easy."
I used to see them on I 10 in Texas while driving the Big Rig. They really get slaughtered by cars.
They have been moving into the southeast for decades, but we still don't have them here in the North Carolina mountains. Too cold, I guess.
Yes they are the only animal, besides humans, that can catch leprosy.
Do you suppose that they are following the Mexicans North?