![]() Was she sick, we wondered? As she got closer to us we noticed that she had accumulated a pile of leaves and a blue piece of plastic. She (we think the behavior indicated female) was sort of half hopping backwards along a planting area toward the deck. The second interesting behavior occurred when my bride noticed an armadillo near our back deck behaving oddly. (I gave him a “10” for distance and a “9.5” for style points.) With a high jump and 180-degree-turn in mid-air, he was back in the brush. When we had to move on, I tapped the horn and you would have thought he had touched an electric fence. Now armadillos have great senses of smell but they can’t see very well at all. Pausing to watch we saw an armadillo blissfully rolling and playing in the mud hole. As we came home one day, we noticed it was moving. At a low point on what we euphemistically call a road from our gate to our house there was a large chug hole of standing water and mud. The first occurred after the recent rain we had. Whatever it is called, we observed two armadillo behaviors recently that we had never seen before. I call this “master naturalist research” while more motivated folks might call it “goofing off”. That gives us a chance to closely observe them. ![]() The armadillos’ lack of fur and relative lack of insulating body fat make winter survival a problem.Įven though the digging is not easy on the caliche rock of my ranch, we do have several armadillos around. Wildlife biologists believe they will continue to expand their range until they reach areas with harsher winters. Today armadillos extend as far north as southern Nebraska. An old natural history book we have that was published in the 1950s states that the armadillos then current range was south of an east/west line near Corpus Christi. Armadillos first crossed the Rio Grande into Texas in the late 1800’s. This led me to believe that they had always been a part of the Texas landscape. ![]() In point of fact, the nine banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) is the official “small mammal” of Texas.ĭuring my growing up years (which is longer ago than I care to admit) armadillos were always around. What comes to mind? Sure, there are some obvious ones: oil wells, longhorn cattle, and cowboys on paint horses to name a few but what about the armadillo? Many people do seem to associate the odd looking and oddly appealing little creature with the great state of Texas. Think with me for a minute about images associated with Texas. Dan Rayfield, Texas Master Naturalist, Indian Trail Chapter ![]()
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