Armadillos

[chrysanthemum]

I mentioned in a different thread that I thought an armadillo had been digging in my garden.  It has continued, so I thought I’d create a separate thread on armadillos in this section.

Our garden is fenced.  We say it’s like Fort Knox, but it is obviously very easy for armadillos to infiltrate.  The fence is not buried because there is so much rock, but we really haven’t seen much evidence that the animal(s) is (are) going under the fence.  We think that they are slipping through some 4 x 4 squares.  It’s rabbit fencing at the bottom, and then a horse fence sits on top of that to keep deer out.  The armadillos would have to climb a bit to get up to the 4x4 section, but that’s our best guess, and we’ve read that they will climb a little distance.  We covered a lot of that section with poly mesh (recently resecured with zip ties) in an effort to keep deer from reach through and uprooting plants (it has happened, and the mesh helped), but we have areas that are still accessible.




We’ve decided to replace our horse fencing with a taller version so that it can come down lower and cover those four by four holes but still be high enough to deter the deer, and we need more fencing in other places for deer protection, so the replaced fencing will be very handy.

Here are some photos of the damage this morning.


The only plant badly damaged in this tomato bed was my young cilantro. I replanted it, but I don’t know if it will take. It’s really hard for a root-damaged plant to handle Texas sunshine long enough to let it recover. I can pretty easily grow another cilantro, but I’m more upset that the armadillo basically tilled all my heavy wood chip mulch into my garden soil. We mulch heavily on top to protect the foliage and keep down heat and water loss, but I try not to mix the wood chips in too much so that they don’t bind up nitrogen. Well, the armadillo did the entire bed for me and did it quite thoroughly.




There was digging in about half my beds. The hardest hit was the bed that has onions, cucumbers, and peppers all interplanted. It was the second time that one had been dug up, and I’m going to lose at least one, probably two, and possibly three out of my four slicing cucumber plants because of torn roots. I’m not happy because I used my last four hybrid seeds to grow those. They do well in our heat without getting bitter too early, and I had been really looking forward to those, as they’ve performed superbly for us in the past.







The sweet potato bed was hit again, but it was mostly between the plants this time.

I was upset that some of my young heavy hitter okra was disturbed.  It seems okay so far, so I hope the tap root survived.  I didn’t poke around too much when I was putting soil back.

We have two traps that we borrowed from the next door neighbors, and we found grubs and tied them up for bait.  We have the traps at corners of our raised beds to hopefully get the armadillos guided into the openings.  It hasn’t worked so far, but maybe juicy grubs will entice them.  (I really didn’t want to put bait in my garden, but I think my husband is right that the armadillos will come anyway, and we need to give them more reason to walk in the direction of the traps.)

I can’t handle the replacement fencing on my own, and I’m not sure that my husband can help before the weekend.  I hope my garden survives till then.  

[heavyhitterokra]

Groundhogs and squirrels also do damage similar to that. They also climb trees and can climb fences with little effort.  Squirrels love sweet potatoes.  They eat my cucumbers, tomatoes, and watermelons all the time.

Do you know anyone who has a game camera?

Wildlife can really get frustrating sometimes.  I had one year where a group of crows started pulling up my onion sets.  They wouldn't eat them, they'd just pull them up like it was a game.  They destroyed an entire 150' foot row of onions that year, by pulling them back up every time I replanted them, until the onions just couldn't take it anymore.

I kind of think it was one bad crow, leading the rest to do mischief.  I could never sneak up on them, but eventually set up camp in an old pickup truck about a hundred yards away and finally shot the ring leader.  After that, they gradually lost interest in tearing things up and went somewhere else to play, but by then, my onions were long gone. 

Different wildlife problems require different bait.  I use Atwoods, salted, in the shell peanuts to bait my live traps for squirrels.  I use marshmallow cream, mixed with peanut butter, and chocolate syrup, to bait raccoons.  I use canned tuna to bait possums.  I use eggs to bait snakes. I've never baited an armadillo before; they just wander into my live traps on their own at times.  


I do catch and release, unless it's an animal that has been killing my livestock.  I live a few miles from a wildlife refuge and just take my wayward garden pests there to set them free.  Sometimes, the Rangers at the Nature Center will ask that I drop things off with them.  That's where I used to take the bulk of my snakes.

[heavyhitterokra]

Here's proof that once an animal makes up its mind that it wants something, no amount of deterrent is going to change its mind.

My wife has a yearling deer that she raised on a bottle. The day I planted seeds in the Plasticulture, she decided that she was going to walk on it, no matter if it harelipped the governor! Finally, she got her fill of whatever it was that she thought she wanted out there and just went away.
Here she is, wondering what she can step on next.  I think she just likes the way it feels to walk on top of the rows.

Here I am, in a series of photos, holding her by the tail and scolding her as she leans out as far as she can to do it again.

She's beginning to get annoyed now.  And yes, deer do occasionally bite!  She never has hurt anyone on purpose though.

You can see in her facial expression that's she's getting tired of me holding her by the tail.

Finally, I gave up and just turned her loose.

Finally, she got her fill of whatever it was that she intended to do and walked back out into the woods.  Hopefully, when I put an electric fence up later, she will decide she doesn't enjoy playing out in my garden as much as she likes to right now.

[heavyhitterokra]

There are options less lethal than the one used on the onion pilfering crow.  I also have a plain old Daisy BB gun that I paid about $20.00 for. It's just a one-pump Red Ryder, for little kids, but it is amazing how far away you can get a stray dog, or cat, or squirrel's attention. I use it to shoot trash cans from a couple of hundred feet away. The pop that the BB makes on impact is usually enough to scare most animals away.

I also use it to keep my wandering geese in line when they decide to patrol our neighbor's yard and I'm too busy to go chase them on foot. It shoots so slow that you can actually see the BB in flight. That makes it handy to adjust elevation so that you don't need to use the sights for far-off shots. It's also not hard-hitting, so you don't have to worry about seriously injuring a cat or whatever. (Just try to avoid any headshots, as a BB could put an eye out). Other than that, this is a fairly harmless security tool.

I've been shot with one before. They sting a little and may bring a temporary whelp, but nothing you can't live with. My own dad shot me in the head with one at close range once. (Such a nurturing parent). All it did was lodge the BB under the scalp a bit. He picked it out with a pocket knife, poured some Mercurochrome on it, and rocked on ... Things were a bit different in the '60s. Dad was just 'toughening us up' in case of the draft.

[macmex]

Armadillos are pretty easy to trap with a Havahart live trap. They're the best for armadillo as they have two doors and open on both ends, but I suspect a single door live trap could also work. Armadillos generally follow along fence lines and building foundations. They kind of zigzag in open ground, until they come upon an obstacle and then they follow it. So, to catch an armadillo, one sets a livetrap along such a barrier. To make it even more effective, one can construct some kind of "funnel" leading into the mouth of the trap, something like a large "V." I've used logs and buckets to make a funnel. And that's it. Armadillos move during the night. So set the trap and check it in the morning.

I have had to trap armadillos every couple of years. They want to take up residence under my daughter's modular home and under her LP gas tank.

Interestingly, they really aren't native this far north. They've been moving north for quite some time now. They used to be limited to parts of Texas, Mexico and Central America. I've heard of them being found, now, as far north as Nebraska.

When we lived in Mexico we often saw people who had hunted armadillo and were selling the meat, door to door. Can't recall now, but I do recall that it was considered medicinal to eat it. It was EXPENSIVE! I always wanted to try it, but wasn't about to pay four times the price of good beef. During the last half of our time in Mexico we did an annual trip to Oklahoma, to put the kids in a Christian camp, for their yearly exposure to American language and culture. I would see lots of armadillos up here, especially at night, when I had to drive especially late or early, and I would think, "Boy! I'd sure like to try armadillo meat!" But I never had any place to process, much less cook one.

Finally, we moved here in 2005. Soon after I got my wish. I don't process much wild meat anymore, due to time constraints, but if I catch an armadillo, I still process it. The meat smells odd when raw, but it cooks up fine. I've used the meat in chili, and I've also turned it into jerky.

Here's a fun anecdote. Where I work, there is generally an annual "chili cookoff" held among faculty, staff and students, replete with prizes. For years the rules clearly stated that "was not permitted" to label their entry with anything identifying who made it or what was in it. So, for some years I had fun with this. I made duck chile, rabbit chile, snapping turtle chile and rabbit chile. I may have even made squirrel chili one year. Then, one year I went all out. I made ARMADILLO CHILI! Of course, no labels were allowed.

The judges for this chili cook off were higher ups from the college and university,  including the president of the university and the dean of the college. That year though they didn't award me a prize, they did take note of my chili. I suppose that amounted to "Umm, this one is unique. I've never tasted chili like this before. Here' try this again. What do you think?" Somehow word got out that I had made ARMADILLO chili and... it got back to the dean of my college. Later that day he walked up to me in the hallway and said, "George, I have only one question for you. What was in your chili?" I answered, "armadillo..." and he was gone, heading back to the lunch room.

Ever since that year there has been a new rule for the chili cookoff. "All entries must be placed on the table with along with a full list of ingredients/"

[heavyhitterokra]

George,

Where I come from, your 'upper crust' hillbillies would call that, "Possum on the half shell." 

In reading about your Armadillo Chili, I realized we had no thread about preparing wild game, so I started one for us, under 'Wildlife.'

[chrysanthemum]

Macmex, that story made me laugh, but it did not make me want actually to eat an armadillo.

Bon, no worries about hijacking the thread. It’s how conversation works.

Heavyhitterokra, we do have some pretty feisty squirrels around here. We used lethal traps on them last year because they ate so many tomatoes. They simply refused to share with us (and they were destroying other things in the backyard, including some electrical wiring.) I haven’t seen them dig holes as big as what I’m finding, though, but I wouldn’t put much past the squirrels here. As for groundhogs, I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t have eaten the plants themselves. I really don’t think anything has been chewed, just uprooted. I’ve seen them climb fencing and walk across the top like a tightrope walker. I’ve also seen them squeeze in between the top and bottom slats of pallets. It’s amazing what animals so fat from gorging on garden produce can do! (I haven’t seen a groundhog in Texas, though. The ones I saw were in Virginia.)

If we do succeed in trapping an armadillo, our plan is to text the nextdoor neighbor, who can text a man who does their yard work, who has a friend who eats armadillos. He’s grateful to get them, and we’d be glad to have them removed. We have to catch one first. One did get the grubs out of the bag that was zip tied in the smaller trap, but the trap wasn’t sprung. We’re not sure why. We rebaited both traps, but this time my husband let me put them outside the garden fence. We could see that it/they had been in the mulch at various points around the perimeter, so we thought that might help guide them to the trap.

I will admit that I am rather squeamish about the idea of even touching anything that has touched an armadillo just because I know that they can carry the bacterium that causes leprosy/Hansen’s disease. It’s not actually a very hardy bacterium, so I don’t think it even really survives on surfaces or in water very long. That’s in part what makes armadillos really useful in medical research. We had a surveyor on our property once, and he earned money during his college days by trapping armadillos for medical research.

The armadillo (if that is indeed what it is, since we haven’t actually seen it) succeeded in getting into our garden again last night. It dug in more places, but it didn’t disturb as many plants. One of my big worries has been my asparagus bed, and it did dig a bit in one end. I actually woke up early this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep after I dreamed about a big hole dug in the middle of the asparagus. The reality was not nearly as bad as the dream, but I want to do all I can to exclude the animals from the garden. I’m glad to let them be elsewhere on the property, but elsewhere just is dry and barren and not nearly as tempting as the healthy soil in the garden beds.

Tomorrow I think we’ll be taking down our existing fencing and bending the rabbit fence so that there is mesh on the ground at a right angle to the deer fence. We’ll need to pull back some mulch to “bury” it a bit. Then we’ll install our taller version of the horse fencing above that. It might lower the overall height, but I’m really relying more on the crowded nature of the garden to keep the deer out than the actual height of the fence. It’s going to be a lot of work whatever we do.

I do wish we had a game camera (or knew of someone who did). I’m not quite desperate enough for a stakeout, but it’s getting close. We’ll see if all the fencing work planned for tomorrow does any good.

[chrysanthemum]

Is it possible that an opossum did that kind of damage to my garden? That’s what’s in my trap right now, and I’ve got to decide what to do before it heats up today.

[heavyhitterokra]

chrysanthemum,

In reading about your grub bait being stolen from your trap, I'm reminded of raccoons. They are clever little devils. I've had them roll a have-a-heart trap over to get the bait out without getting caught. I've also had them reach through the wire to snag the bait out with their little monkey hands without setting off the traps.

I finally resorted to staking the trap down, so it couldn't be flipped over, placing plywood on three sides, so the raccoons couldn't reach through the wire, and painting the trap pan with a mixture of marshmallow cream, chocolate ice cream topping, and peanut butter. That way the coon had to climb inside the trap to lick this mixture off of the trap pan and I finally caught him.

After I figured out how to outsmart them, I caught several more that way, but in the beginning, it was very frustrating to see how they outwitted my many other attempts. I had used tuna, fried chicken, cat food, and any other coon-type lure I read about, but only the gooey marshmallow paint actually worked. I just warmed the mixture in a saucepan, then sacrificed an old paintbrush to the task of spreading the sticky goo in strategic places within the enclosure to entice the raccoon to come inside.

I've also read about armadillos being a carrier of human diseases, but I've actually reached into armadillo holes and pulled them out by the tail before.  They are strong, but as far as being able to defend themselves, they are not much.  They can claw you, but not if you keep out of their reach.

[chrysanthemum]

I’ve been pondering all sorts of ideas for what’s been getting in.  The stolen bait made me think of raccoons as well.  I also noticed a skunk odor around our shed when I was putting some tools away last night, and we had a strong odor the other night that actually made our laundry room smell.  I stayed up late last night reading about skunk nesting places and really thought that maybe I was going to find a skunk in the trap this morning.  Nope, it was an opossum.

I was hoping that maybe the opossum was the culprit all along as it was in the trap this morning, and my garden was not tilled up.  The ability to climb would also explain entry.

Almost the whole day was devoted to fence improvements at the garden.  We pulled all the mulch away from the perimeter of the garden area, removed all the current fencing, folded the top of the rabbit fencing down to turn the 4-inch squares into 2-inch rectangles, then turned the whole fence upside and put the 2 inch rectangles flat on the ground extending out from the fence. 



We had had four-foot horse fencing above the rabbit fence, but since we lowered the rabbit fencing by a foot by extending half of it on the ground, we replaced the four-foot fencing with five-foot fencing to try to keep enough height to deter deer.  (The fence is still too short technically, but the garden is so small and crowded that it works.). We have other places where we need to use some fencing, so at least now we have a whole roll of 4-foot fencing available.

While we were working, I could see deer in the next door neighbors’ yard.  We could never leave the garden unattended from the time we started the project till the time we finished.  One deer could do a lot of damage pretty quick.

I had even been wondering if there had been any armadillos at all in my garden, but guess who else came out while we were working in the evening?




Apparently they are living under the shed.  There had been several possible places where we knew something could get access, and we blocked them all with palm leaf mulch this morning so that we could see where the leaves got disturbed.  We now have rock tunnels to funnel them to traps, though we did see one enter the large trap we borrowed, and apparently it wasn’t heavy enough to set off the pressure plate.  

I’m exhausted from all that fencing work.  Even my fingers ache.  I sure hope it helps to keep these guys out of the garden.  They did look small enough to slip through a four inch square.  Now the fencing is down to 2 inches by 4 inches or smaller. 

[heavyhitterokra]

I expanded the photo you posted. Wow! That was a lot of armadillos! I never realized they traveled in packs.  It looked like anyone of those could have slipped through the webbing of a concrete block.  That would be tough to guard against.  It does make sense that there are 4 of them in the photo though, I've read that 9 banded armadillos give birth to 4 identical young, all from one egg, sharing the same placenta.

They are also listed as a staple food item in Oaxaca, Mexico with many recipes being shared locally in that region, seen as a replacement for pork or chicken and reported to have a very fine texture and good flavor.


armadillo-online.org/facts.html

[macmex]

Chrysanthemum, 

      Maybe you have several species getting into your garden. I can't say that I've ever had a opossum damage my garden, though I have found them sleeping in my squash patch (shady quiet place). Raccoon can be horribly destructive. They are awful with poultry too. I'm glad our livestock guardian dogs keep them away.

Our daughter who lives on the same property hadn't yet mentioned it to me, but she was hearing bumping sounds under her house at night. Generally this means she has an armadillo problem. Saturday morning we found this on the road, in front of her house. I had to take pictures. This is "the iconic armadillo picture."

  

[chrysanthemum]

When we saw four small ones, we figured that they were four identical quadruplets that are living under the shed.   I don’t know if Mama still lives with them or not. We had piled palm brush mulch against the area where the foundation is more raised (the shed isn’t on a slab but on blocks, and part of the foundation is hidden by a dilapidated wooden walkway), and we can see where they disturbed the mulch to get out.  Unfortunately the shed is big, and there are lots of places they can use, so we haven’t trapped any.  (My husband did catch one on Saturday, but three remain.)

We plan to put some wire around the bottom of the shed because it’s too good a place for animals to nest, and we don’t want wildlife in burrows so close to the home, garden, and children’s play area.  We also don’t want continued burrowing to undermine the foundation.  We need to get the armadillos out, though, before we begin to close off the area.  It’s going to be a big project.  (Sigh.)

Thankfully the garden has been undisturbed by digging for the past two nights.  Occasionally they’d give us one night off, but we haven’t had two nights since the first holes showed up, so I think that’s a positive sign that our improved fencing really is an improvement.  I am very thankful.

[heavyhitterokra]

That's very good news. One down! This has been a good thread.  I've learned more about armadillos in one week than in all of the rest of my life combined. We have armadillos out here that like digging deep holes in our walking trails. In winter, the fallen oak leaves cover the holes so well that I can't see them at all. More than once I've stepped off into an armadillo hole that came very close to ruining my day. Over the years, I've gotten rid of quite a few of them by filling them to the brim with rocks.  After reading that armadillos have a litter of four pups per season, I'm beginning to understand why there are so many holes still around.

[chrysanthemum]

Yesterday when my husband and I were standing by the shed, I kept asking him if he heard bumping. It was confusing because some neighbor must have been playing some loud music because we could hear the bass from that, and that’s what my husband was hearing, but I was sure I was hearing an occasional thump from the shed. Reading about the thumps against your daughter’s house make me think I wasn’t imagining it.