were they wearing burnt orange jerseys? i bet they were those varmits...

Dale OKC

As a Texan critter that somehow ended up in Oklahoma, I can speak for them in saying that we don't know how we got here, but we're not going anywhere!

-Matt

Back to those four legged kind with hard shells....

They are interesting animals because they always have four young that are identical so they use them for research. I think their normal temperature is lower than humans so at one time they were going to expose them to leporsy in a controlled situation. Soon, as they collected more they found that some already had leprosy before they were collected. I have seen the stats that say only about 5 percent have it, but that is still a sizable number when you consider how many animals there are.

Eating undercooked amadillo meat can transfer the disease to humans. It may be possible to transfer it other ways.

It isn't a big threat, but be careful if your situation involves handling them and be sure to wear gloves.

When I lived in southern Oklahoma, I had a friend visiting from Colorado. We were driving around Lake Murray and I asked if she had ever seen an amardillo. She said that she had seen pictures, but had never seen a live one. As if on cue, this armadillo appeared a few feet from the road on my left. I stopped. It contined right across the (almost) road we were driving on, in front of the car and over to her side of the road. She was so excited. LOL

Too bad you don't live near Cooper since her husband has a shotgun he likes to use in the garden. LOL

Sammy,

Good try, but I bet no one claims those armadillos.

We had a major case of them for a couple of years, but after I treated the lawn in August for grubs, that reduced their visits by about 90%. We still have an occasional one pop up here and there, but not in huge numbers like we saw previously.

When I was a kid in Texas, they always said armadillos would never go further north than north Texas because they couldn't survive the cold. Well, now they've gone up into Kansas and Missouri, so that theory didn't hold.

They are a constant presence here, but I see them dead in or alongside the road more than I see them alive. One year one got into my garden and dug a burrow underneath a raised bed. It did not live there long!

They get run over a lot because when a car approaches they jump up into the air, a move that might help them escape most animal predators, but one which doesn't really help them in the roadways since it means they get hit by the car bumper.

You can trap them and release them "out in the country". If you have a live animal trap (ours is large enough to catch even very large coons and foxes and smallish bobcats), you can bait it (canned cat food works well in ours) and trap them and release them someplace else. Since armadillos have poor vision, if you put up a piece or two of chicken wire fencing that sort of funnels them into the trap, you have more success trapping them. They just sort of run along that fenceline until they find themselves in the trap. I don't recommended trapping skunks, by the way.

Dawn

Dawn's point on trapping them is the key. They really do follow fences and walls. We had a couple under our modular home. I realized that they usually came out the hole and proceeded to cross into our neighbor's pasture. All I did was set my live trap, roughly in their path, and place a couple more obstacles to funnel them in. I caught them in no time at all. In fact, the first one, went into the trap before I could get out of ear shot.

Armadillo is the best tasting wild meat I know of. And it's easy to get out of the shell. There was lots of it too. We won a prize a church for our "armadillo chili."

George
Tahlequah, OK

George,

Well, maybe you can take your live trap over to Sammy's, trap her armadillos, take them home and make chili. See there, a neat solution for all involved.....

Dawn

I read online that you can dust the ground with dried crushed hot pepper. They'll inhale it, freak out, and run away. I don't know if that works?

This thread is cracking me up! And I really needed the laugh today. :D

Jo

I had an Armadillo problem 2 or three years ago, a few of them fell victim to the traffic on the hwy, three died of lead poisoning in my yard.

You guys are so funny.As I was posting this I was thinking about the time that I seriously posted about a baby bunny problem I had.

There was a baby bunny nest right in the cage with one of my roses. I received so many sympathetic responses from the women. Then the responses from the men came. Sadly, I did nothing and lost the rose.

You men have a totally different take on nature than I do. My husband agrees with you.

Sammy

Ewww - George! You ate one! I thought the groundhog stories were bad enough.

I may be a gardener who plays in the worms, soil, compost, and manure, but I do have some firm rules, and I don't follow ALL of the advice I read on Oklahoma Gardening. So-o-o, don't feed me varmit meat, don't pee in my compost pile, don't top my tomatoes with a shotgun blast, etc., etc. A girl has to have some rules.

I heard peeing in compost was good. Seriously I am considering it.

(Still laughing),

Jo

I think the red pepper powder Kelly suggested could work under the right circumstances. Dillos do have very delicate and sensitive noses (perhaps to make up for the rest of them being so hard-shelled and armored).

However, with any kind of pepper powder you put out, you'd have to reapply it often---most likely after every rainfall, irrigation or even very heavy dew. Also, take into consideration the family and pets as the red pepper sprinkled around could irritate them too.

Dawn

Somewhere I saw a plaque which read something like
"Definition: Armadillo
A armored, flat animal, normally found sleeping in the middle of highways..."

As far as eating them, I guess you could look at them as
"Land Lobsters", or "Country Crabs". Just put a large white napkin around your neck when you sit down at the table, and serve them with a warm, ramekin of garlic butter.

Susan

All kidding aside, if you eat armadillo meat, always make sure it is well-cooked. There have been cases in which people contracted leprosy from undercooked meat. (Well-cooked meat isn't a problem.) And, yes, I suppose only a Texas girl would know armadillo meat must be 'well done' for safety reasons.

During the Dust Bowl days, people in desperate situations often resorted to eating armadillo meat. They called armadillos "Hoover hogs" after President Hoover's campaign promise of "a chicken in every pot" failed to actually put a chicken in every pot. Some people in Mexico, Central America and South America still eat them.

See there....y'all thought gardening was my only area of knowledge....but I know a little bit about dillos too.

Dawn

...nothing wrong with peeing in the compost. :) Like I said, it's a good source of nitrogen. You can't get much more directly organic than that! Plus, it keeps the rodents away...might even keep the armadillos away.

-Matt