Scott: Are armadillos for real?

I’ve long been suspicious that Mother Nature takes perverse pleasure in confounding even the most reasonable theories promulgated by biologists, naturalists, outdoor communicators and other real or self-appointed experts.

If I’m right, the case of the unadaptable nine-banded armadillo has to be among her favorites.

One of several species of tropical and subtropical armadillos, the nine-banded first crossed the Mexican border into the United States late in the 19th century. Whether they were acting as advance scouts for Pancho Villa or were simply curious about why so many more human tracks led north than south has been lost to history.

What is certain is that they liked what they saw well enough to begin making the transition from pioneers to settlers. It was an easy transition for the species to make. A female armadillo reaches sexual maturity at one year of age and can give birth to one set of identical quadruplets each year for the remainder of her 12- to 15-year lifetime.

Predators, including humans, have little interest in making them a major part of their diets.

Biologists determined that nine-banded armadillos  had low metabolic rates and an underdeveloped thermoregulation system.

Since these closely related facts of armadillo genetics had been imprinted on the species for umpteen million years, who could blame anyone who predicted that the species could not advance any meaningful distance into the United States?

Not realizing that expanding their North American range was physiologically impossible, armadillos had conquered Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida by 1995.  

By 2005, the by-now admittedly amazingly adaptable armored vagabond had added Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia and the southern halves of Nebraska, Illinois and Indiana to its home range.

As of now, armadillos are expected to colonize Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and all points south in the eastern United States.

While no state has welcomed the armadillo with open arms, the animal’s official status varies.

In Missouri the nine-banded armadillo is classified as a non-native invasive species (other examples include starlings and English sparrows) and is not protected under the auspices of the Wildlife Code.

So far I’ve reported what I’ve learned from other sources. Based on my lack of observations, the armadillo is a fictional creature. I’m pretty sure there’s a factory hidden somewhere in the swamps of southern Louisiana that turns out thousands of phony armadillos, which are manufactured by stuffing thoroughly dead possums into half-crushed snapping turtle shells.

Highway departments in the South then strew these unrealistic fakes on highway shoulders to fool tourists.

Despite the fact that Missouri drivers run over thousands of real animals every year — including a few formerly imaginary mountain lions — the Missouri Department of Transportation has apparently decided to join the armadillo charade.

I’ve seen two examples of their efforts along U.S. Highway 65 between here and Warsaw, but both were overly flattened and not impressive.

On the other hand, Sydney Brink, who’s among the most talented news photographers I know, showed me a photo he shot of an ersatz armadillo he found lying in the gutter near Broadway Boulevard and Park Avenue.

It was amazingly realistic. But then Sydney could make a photo of an old boot look good.

I know it’s silly, but just for the sake of argument, let’s assume I’m wrong and that armadillos really do exist right here in the Show-Me State.

They would dine almost exclusively on insects. That sounds like a good thing, and it would be, too, were it not for the fact that armadillos prefer bugs that they can root out of the top few inches of soil covering lawns, gardens, terraces and other locations the owners of which would prefer remained undisturbed.

A booklet put out by the Missouri Department of Conservation suggests that the owners of lawns under attack by armadillos stop watering their grass in order to make it less attractive to four-footed bulldozers.

That might work, but since an armadillo could burrow through a gravel road if it wanted to, I wouldn’t count on it.

To my way of thinking, a far more practical solution would be to shoot the offending Hoover hogs. After all, they taste just like pork.