Not another armadillo!
Go home to Texas!!
Yes, I admit it--There was a time when I thought armadillos were cute little creatures, curiously exotic and fascinatingly foreign.
That was about five years ago, I would guess. I would see them alongside the highway from Advance to my sister's house in Springfield--and one time I even counted dead armadillos to keep myself awake!
Those days are in the past. Now the little obnoxious armed semi-rodents are HERE!!! And, unfortunately, they do not confine themselves to the highway. They are in our yards!
My good friend Emma lives just outside Advance to the east, and she is battling armadillo burrows all over her yard.
I would agree to loan her my dogs, but I don't think it would help much, because I suspect that the dogs are burrowing into the ground, after the armadillos, leaving even larger holes!
I wouldn't mind the dogs' extracurricular nightly activity, but for two reasons: 1) They bark all night! and 2) They insist on bringing their dead treasures up into my yard, so I can appreciate their hunting skills! ("Look what we killed for you, Mama!")
Do you have any idea how HEAVY an armadillo is?? Try picking one up some time! For an animal about the size of a possum or a cat, they are inordinately heavy! It feels as if they're full of metal musket balls!
When the dogs first started using the front yard as an Armadillo Bone Field, I actually got a shovel, struggled to dig a hole, carried the heavy carcass to the burial place, dumped it in, and shoveled in dirt.
THIS IS TOO HARD!!!
After about a week of burying armadillos every morning before work, I changed the funeral arrangements! Now, if my truck will start (which it WOULD NOT this morning!), I get the shovel, pick up the dead item, put it in the back of my truck, and take it off down a gravel road to a ditch far enough away that my dogs won't bring it back. Let the resident troop of vultures polish it off!
I DO NOT PUT IT IN MY DUMPSTER!! My dumpster is emptied once a month! Need I say more??
This morning, since my truck wouldn't start, I put on my trusty yellow rubber gloves, picked up the armored rodent by the tail, and carried it down to the pond, where I performed a burial at sea! (P.S. You can do this if your dogs have not mauled the animal into such a mess that a) the body won't hold together or b) the sight is so ghastly that it makes you vomit!)
Ah, the joys of country life!
I have a question---Why, after all these years of living peacefully down in the Texas desert--have armadillos come north?
Yes, yes, folks--the answer is as obvious as the noses on our faces:
GLOBAL WARMING!!!
Comments
- -- Posted by Dexterite1 on Wed, Jul 27, 2011, at 6:33 AM
- -- Posted by kkcaver47 on Wed, Jul 27, 2011, at 12:02 PM
- -- Posted by JHeaton on Wed, Jul 27, 2011, at 2:42 PM
- -- Posted by goat lady on Thu, Jul 28, 2011, at 11:58 AM
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