Posted on 09/04/2006 9:40:48 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
The official small mammal of Texas is becoming a Yankee.
Blame global warming. Or maybe just wanderlust
Texans feel proprietary about the armored mammal, but we hardly have a monopoly on its range. It's not even a native.
The nine-banded armadillo, the most prolific of the 20 species of armadillo and the only one to live in the United States, crossed the Rio Grande about 150 years ago.
In recent years, though, it has been spotted as far north as Illinois.
"I don't know exactly how they get here," said Joyce Hofmann, a research scientist with the Illinois Natural History Survey's center for wildlife and plant ecology. "I don't know if they're really surviving and breeding here."
But she has gathered more than 100 reports of sightings — mostly roadkill — since 1999.
A few have been found as far north as Chicago, but most have been in southern Illinois.
Emboldened by the disappearance of its predators, the 'dillo spread first across the Southeast and now is marching through the Midwest, where the biggest threat isn't bobcats and foxes but freezing weather.
"You don't see the individual (armadillo) up there looking for an overcoat," said Duane Schlitter, program leader for nongame species and rare and endangered species at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Mainly, you see them with frostbite. Or dead. But if their offspring survive, the species will have gained another outpost.
"During periods of warm winters, they'll disperse north during the summers and won't die off in the winter, so the next summer, they'll disperse a little further," Schlitter said.
Scientists say the movement is interesting but no big surprise.
"Things are always kind of fluid," Hofmann said. "We've had a couple of wolves show up lately. And mountain lions."
Still, she admitted, "for a smallish animal, it's really moved a long way."
How it got there on its own remains something of a mystery.
"You know how people are," Hofmann said. "They pick (animals) up and then think better of it and let them go. But when you get over 100 records, I don't think that's the whole story."
She and other researchers say it's too soon to tell if climate change is behind the movement, but it's possible.
"We don't seem to get as much snow as we used to," Hofmann said. Average winter temperatures in southern Illinois have been in the upper 20s, she said.
And the armadillo's traveling days might not be over.
A 1996 article in the Journal of Biogeography suggested the nine-banded armadillo could settle from Nebraska to New York and on to Cape Cod. With human help, it could even go west, stretching from California into parts of Canada.
Its range currently ends before Big Bend in far West Texas. It's not the climate that discourages them so much as the dirt.
"They burrow and they root for their food," said Doug Steen of Texas A&M University's Wildlife Services, who often mediates conflicts between people and armadillos. "As you get further west, the soil types change, and it's not as easy to dig."
They prefer well-watered lawns and flower beds, places where the burrowing is easy and insects plentiful.
People consider armadillos a nuisance, but Steen says they do have some benefits. "They aerate the soil," he said. "But when that happens to be in the middle of your St. Augustine lawn or in the middle of your high-dollar landscaped flowerbeds, they lose their cuddliness."
These critters have been expanding their range northward for hundreds of years. Has nothing to do with "global warming", but the "Warmists" will find a way of claiming that's what's happening.
They can attribute everything from a bad hair day to a volcano to be caused by their sacred global warming".
Wow...I bet he's tired by now.
In the Kemah/Seabrook area and south on 146 to Galveston there are now a few thousand small green parrots.
They build huge nest in the power line towers.
They're everywhere down here.
They have been here in Florida (entire state) forever.
From the Rio Grande to the southern end of this state is quite a walk.
I have a few in my backyard in KC.
Mammal or marsupial?
All this talk of possums and armadillo's is makin' me hungry. (sarc off)
Atlanta Georgia too, thirty years ago you never saw one.
Armadillos were known as "Hoover Hogs" during the depression. Apparently the "Hogs" were barbequed, roasted, and stewed when food was scarce. Who knows, maybe they taste good with the right recipe. You might even become a "Hoover Hog" rancher - the "new white meat" so to speak. Anyone know if "Hoover Hogs" are tender and tasty or tough and gamy?
At annual training in Camp Shelby MS, 'dillos were described to the uninitiated as "the M1A1 armorplated possum".
You better have steel toes in your shoes if you try to kick one.
I lived in Texarkana Texas for a year in the 70's, and yes, the folks down there do eat Armadillo. I never could bring myself to try it, but they told me it tastes like................pork (you thought I was going to say chicken, didn't you?).
I hope they all leave Texas. I've got a regular armadillow boot hill out in back. They are highly destructive animals that will dig under the foundation, sidewalks and driveways. And they have been known to carry leprosy. Filthy creature.
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To show the armadillo it could be done.
Get one of those animal traps. Then use your trusty 22 and drop him in a hole after he quits flopping about. They will outrun you and I gave that up a long time ago. However, they don't see very well. You could camp up on your roof and wait to see them at night and then shoot them with the 22. But the animal traps are the best. We caught about eight of them last year and one small one got into my fenced yards. I shot him with my 22 pistol and then buried the varmit.
I have found that if you place the traps along a fence they will often just wander in there on their own. It may take a little experimentation but that's my preferred way. We put quite a dent in their population last year.
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