Amadillo Kill

Some of the strands in a food web are hard to live with. The inconvenience of a species depends on its intrusive factor in our lives. For gardeners a multitude of grasshoppers is a disaster, but for the exotic diners a plague is a feast. Years ago in the city where we lived, possums were a scourge. I can’t count the number of possums I killed. In fact I ran out of room in the back yard from burying their carcasses. Instead, I’d catch them in a trap and dispatch them in the country. At least the buzzards were fed the following day.

The other evening near sundown, I was out back inspecting my potted plants on the stairs that go nowhere, when I heard something rustling in the leaves. I knew it wasn't my cat wandering around since he was nearby, sitting, and looking in the direction of the leaf disturbance as well. By and by I caught sight of an armadillo wandering around, digging the ground and munching on bug morsels. Anger flushed away any bowels of compassion I may have had. Usually I am not a killer of lower creatures simply because they are breathing, but this critter aggravated me. For several days armadillos had been turning over my potted plants in search of bugs. I also heard complaints from neighbor Joe down the hill that armadillos had been plowing up his lawn.

Any armadillo caught crossing Joe’s lawn is dead meat. Snakes are deader meat. One evening back in July, I heard three shotgun blasts (I was told later there were five in all.) from the direction of Joe’s house. I envisioned there were several armadillos feeding in his yard, all being bushwhacked by Joe’s Mossburg. I went down to his house to snoop things out. When I arrived Joe was trying to remove with a shovel a very long snake from one of his cedar trees he had mangled at close range with his shootin’ iron (both snake and tree). The snake was headless; a portion of its center was missing, resembling a big bite; and the coiled tail section that held the dangling carcass in the fork of a limb was attached by a thin shred of skin. When asked why he needed to shoot the snake so many times, he told me that it kept moving. I guess he wanted to get it out of its misery. Compassionate soul.

Being the impressionable person that I am, I decided to join Joe in his campaign to thin the armadillo population, at least on Hidden Bluff. In order to fully appreciate the passion the members of the NRA have to bear arms, I figured I needed to experience the thrill of the kill. I went into the house, got my .22 pistol, and returned with the view of dispatching the armadillo. I wasn’t entirely cold natured about it; there was a twinge of second thoughts about shooting him, but as with all excuses resulting from emotionally based reasoning, I pressed forward with a killer intent based on the distructo premise—the armadillo had no right destroying property. He deserves to die! I was about ten feet from the poor creature before squeezing off a shot. I expected him to writhe and kick in agony, lie gasping for air, and bleed all over my rocks. He simply perked up his head and resumed munching on another grub he had found. I knew I had hit him. I was too close to miss. However, I didn’t realize how tough an armadillo’s hide is. I also understand why God gave those creatures body armor to protect them. They seem to have the mentality of the gnat; and they look funny, too--a head fit for “The Far Side.” And their senses are severely challenged. They are so blind and deaf that if you carefully, slowly creep upon one, you can kick him across the road like a football. Wouldn’t hurt him though. He’d just get up from the bouncing roll and start digging for some more worms.

I fired again. I assume that bullet hurt him a little because this time he began moving briskly down the hill. I followed him. When he would stop to scratch at the dirt, I’d fire again. During the course of his stopping to scratch and my following and shooting him five times, I ended up in the middle of the lot south of our property, where the armadillo decided to hightail it away with vigor. I watched the little fellow scamper away, showing no evidence that the long-rifle bullets had any effect on his hide. That harmless experience cauterized my conscience. I had a challenge: Somehow I had to kill an armadillo.

A few nights later the occasion arose. Another armadillo came calling. This time it was much later and the bluff was pitch black; so with flashlight and pistol I headed through the brush toward the leaf-scratching just beyond the stairs that go nowhere with my cat following me. The flashlight caught his beady eyes glistening in the dark. I fired. Whoa ho ho ho! I must have hit this one's nerve. He began scurrying around in circles. I fired again, and again, and finally after the fourth shot, he ended up spinning his front feet with his head butted against a tree. Reminded me of one of those wind-up toys that keeps moving after it runs into a wall. At that point, I decided to use a shovel instead of shooting him again. More importantly I became concerned that my neighbors up the hill were overly disturbed. I discovered that the shovel is not the best thing to use to kill an armadillo. Bonk! It rang like a bell when I missed his head and struck his bony hide. Another interesting thing occurred. When I finally was able to hit his head, he began randomly hopping high off the ground, similar to the behavior of a decapitated chicken or a bucking bronco.

I lost count of the times I hit that armadillo, but with each thump, compassion slowly seeped back into my soul, then came sadness, and finally regret. His head looked adequately mangled for death, but he kept kicking and hopping around. I finally stopped beating up on him and went into the house, leaving him flopping in the leaves, hoping all that bouncing around was due to involuntary muscles as it was with Joe’s wiggling snake.