FiRST Blog entry

Today is my first blog post ever. After 62 years, an amazing wife, four kids, an engineering career and a wildlife management career I finally am making my first blog post! Pretty cool day! 

It is the last day of August (where has August gone??) and Predator Impact has been super busy. The past week we have managed: 

• 8 raccoons
• 3 skunks
• 2 'possums
• 11 beavers
• 5 armadillos
• 1 timber rattlesnake. 

We have been busy!

There has been an unusual number of calls for 9 band armadillos. It is their breeding season, and they are more active than usual. 

​Armadillos are one of my favorite animals. 

A couple of cool facts about armadillos

• Armadillos are the only mammal on earth with an armored shell, and their name means "Little armored one" in Spanish. 
• An armadillo's shell is made of bone plates and is connected to its spine meaning that it has both an internal and external skeleton. 
• There are 20 species of armadillo. The smallest species is about 6' long and weighs less than a pound; the largest is 5 feet long and can weigh up to 100 pounds. The only species found in the US is the 9 banded armadillo. 
• They are the only animal besides humans that can carry leprosy, or Hansen's disease. It isn't easy to catch it from an armadillo, but it is possible. According to a researcher from London, about 80 people a year in the US catch leprosy from armadillos. Mostly in the deep south where they catch and eat them. The armadillos don't show any symptoms of the disease, they are just carriers. 
• Armadillos are excellent eating. Shannon Sheffert, a friend in Stillwater, tricked me into eating armadillo sliders once. They were really good, but physiologically,  I just cant get past the whole leprosy thing, Nope! 
• Female armadillos always produce one egg. Once fertilized, it splits into 4 embryos. A litter of 9 banded armadillos are identical quadruplets, always all 4 the same sex (obviously!) 
• Armadillos can be very destructive. They dig up lawns and flowerbeds looking for grubs and worms. Their burrows can threaten the structural integrity of your home's foundation. 
• An armadillo can sleep up to 16 hours a day and stay in its burrow for a week or more before having to come out. We often place live traps over the entrances of their dens, but it can take 4-5 days before they decide to come out. 
• An armadillo might have as many as 6 burrows and will often visit them in rotation. If you see an armadillo in a certain spot, it may be there again the next night, or it may be a week or more before they are back. 
• When startled or scared, armadillos can jump up to five feet high. This is a defense mechanism that startles any predator trying to eat it. Unfortunately, this tactic is a poor defense against cars on the road! This is largely why they are commonly seen hit on the highway. 
• When trapping armadillos, they don't come to bait like most other animals. We have to find areas where they are traveling and funnel them into a live trap. We also have wooden boxes that an armadillo has lived in previously. The scent of the other armadillo is in the wood and an armadillo will investigate the smell to see who is in its territory. I have to admit that I don't have a lot of luck with the scented traps, but Rick Parker in Grove catches a lot of them this way. I mostly rely on funneling them into the trap with a short stretch of fencing. 
• Armadillos are great swimmers, often walking along the bottom of a creek or pond for a surprising distance. It isn't uncommon to catch them in a beaver trap set underwater. 

As you can tell, I like armadillos. Pretty cool animals. Destructive, but pretty cool. 

All for now
​Mark