The Great Armadillo Caper - by Nan Brooks

Armadillo (not racing)

Searching for a topic for today’s blog at the last minute, I slog through my brain fog and remember what Eleanor Roosevelt’s mother in law taught her about dinner table conversation. Sarah Delano Roosevelt was baffled by her son’s new wife who was extraordinarily shy. At dinner parties, Eleanor could barely manage conversation and Sarah, who was often downright cruel to Eleanor, offered a suggestion. The trick was to go through the alphabet in search of a topic that seemed to interest the other person. So, for instance, Eleanor might say, “Do you enjoy travel, Mr. [whoever]? I wonder if you’ve ever been to Alaska?  So, today I thought of armadillos.

Armadillos are weird, if you ask me. But then, I’m a northerner who had never seen one “in person”. Until one day, soon after we moved to San Antonio, I staggered half asleep through the dining room piled with boxes toward the coffee pot sending waves of caffeinated bliss through the house. The dining room looks out onto a patio and garden through a wall of glass. Immediately on the other side of the glass was a table and on the table was an armadillo.  It was faced toward me tipped onto its side and looked like road kill, dead and bloated. I shrieked.

I don’t think of myself as a shrieker, which may be yet another inaccurate self-perception. In any case, I shrieked at the sight of the armadillo, which started me further because I heard myself shrieking.  I began to tremble, which may or may not have had something to do with lack of caffeine and breakfast, but more likely had to do with the newly deceased prehistoric creature on the patio table.  I have dealt with dead racoons and other wildlife, but this was different. I had some vague that humans gave these poor creatures leprosy and armadillos can return the “favor”. They are also said to carry rabies and various other bacteria. So I was right to be creeped out. So there.

Here’s what National Geographic has to say:

Closely related to anteaters and sloths, armadillos generally have a pointy or shovel-shaped snout and small eyes. They vary widely in size and color, from the 6-inch-long, salmon-colored pink fairy armadillo to the 5-foot-long, dark-brown giant armadillo. Others have black, red, gray, or yellowish coloring…

Most species dig burrows and sleep prolifically, up to 16 hours per day, foraging in the early morning and evening for beetles, ants, termites, and other insects. They have very poor eyesight, and utilize their keen sense of smell to hunt. Strong legs and huge front claws are used for digging, and long, sticky tongues for extracting ants and termites from their tunnels. In addition to bugs, armadillos eat small vertebrates, plants, and some fruit, as well as the occasional carrion meal. www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/group/armadillos/

My friend Diane Kondrat theorizes that armadillos have survived from pre-dinosaur times and may well outlast humans on the planet. I foresee a future of cock roaches and armadillos on a wasted earth. But then, it’s hard to be optimistic these days. Not that such a future would be particularly disastrous to the roaches and armdillos. Diane once attended an armadillo race in Texas when she was a young thing. These races are still popular and there are companies that will bring all the supplies you need for an armadillo race in your town, including the racing creatures, who I suspect don’t move fast. The one on my patio did not move at all, tipped over as it was.

I tiptoed toward the creature, though why I expected it to is a mystery. I then did what any courageous woman would do – or maybe I didn’t. I did not go out onto the patio to make the armadillo’s acquaintance, alas. I was missing an opportunity, but I didn’t care; I was thoroughly creeped out. So I took its picture through the glass.  To get a closer look at the creature, who was clearly as frightened into inaction as I was, I expanded the image on my phone.

The patio visitor

Hmmm, the markings on the armadillo were all alike, no variety of color or pattern. The eyes were beady, though. Maybe like an actual bead. It was a fake, a stuffed toy armadillo. And I knew exactly where it had come from. Sheila.

Sheila is our neighbor and she helped us find our home. She threw a welcoming gathering around the community pool to welcome us, where she said we would meet some people and “eat stuff.”  She likes to invite folks to come over and eat stuff and manages to keep that tradition going despite the pandemic. Sheila is also good at mischief, so she was the only suspect in the armadillo on the patio caper.

I called her on the phone that morning, laughing fairly hysterically as I recall, she said, “Well I figured every Texan needs an armadillo.”

Every morning these days, our dog Bud goes for a 3-mile walk with our lovely neighbors, John and Sue. They see armadillos burrowing in the lawns of the fancy houses in the more upscale neighborhood nearby. Because Bed believes that all living things are his friends except men who deliver things, he once greeted an armadillo nose to nose. By all reports, neither the dog nor the armadillo was interested in the other and both of them walked away in search of other smellier stuff.  I wonder what Bud told our cat when he returned. They do communicate somehow with twitching ears and such, but that is a story for another time.

As for the fake armadillo Sheila gave us, I placed it on the windowsill that is at ground level in our living room, so that people who walk by could marvel.