Armadillo Hunt

Hunting Armadillos

Over my time I have been in close contact with many species of animals. This is because my life long goal has been to be in close contact with animals. However, there are some animals I didn’t mean to get to close to and others that came to parties where they were not invited but didn’t seem to care. Some things that I have bumped into during the night or worse are, to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas, please); 12 different venomous snakes, 11 is a lot of gators, 10 armadillos, 9 tarantulas sleeping, 8 wild hogs, 7 wild dogs, 6 herds of marching army ants, 5 vampire bats, 4 leaping lizards, 3 types of scorpions, 2 many hammerhead sharks and a panther in a mangrove swamp. Lessons that I learned from these encounters, real or imagined, Army ants don’t like it when you sleep in their trail and fire ants like it less. When something bumps you when you are swimming at night, one mile out at sea, that is the definition of lonely. Some bats have lots of friends but vampire bats don’t. In the dark, a tarantula in your rucksack feels like a scouring pad. Camels spit. Kudamunde are cute. Spider monkeys can see in the dark and hammer head sharks don’t eat everyone they see. I still wonder why banana spiders are not in bananas but instead nest face high between trees. Most encounters sound much worse than they were and even if briefly uncomfortable or worrisome I quickly realized I had nothing to fear. I really only hold a grudge against wild dogs, things that go bump in the sea and I’ll never mess with an armadillo again…

Once, friends and I were sort of camping while playing the role of “bad guys” for the Army. While we were waiting to be notionally killed by the rest of the Army, we thought we would catch ourselves some stuff to eat. When the situation allowed, this was a common activity for troops in my situation at the time which you would understand if you ever tried to live on government supplied Meals Ready to Eat (MRE’s).

My buddy “Muddy” and I liked to hunt and trap, “Max” was a Cajun gator hunter from Louisiana who also was a very good outdoor cook, (at least my MRE pummeled taste buds thought so), “Boons” was a rancher’s son from Arkansas that was an excellent fisherman. It was usually the four of us that collected any bonus food from the wild and this trip was no different. Muddy, a deer hunter from Michigan and I wandered off with a plan to catch some meat while Boons made a fishing rig and went down to a stream while Max built a fire and started looking for wild garlic and other herbs. An hour or so into our excursion, Muddy and I were having a heck of time finding a contribution to dinner. WE were kicking stones in self-disgust when we saw the armadillo. Without much thought we took off after the armadillo, driving and poking at it. Only after we caught it did we wonder what it would taste like. No matter how bad it could be, we figured Max’s Cajun cooking could make it taste better than MRE beef stew. We happily marched back into our doomed camp. Once we arrived and proudly displayed our dinner armadillo you can imagine our surprise when rather than a cheer and discussion of spices, we heard fear and disgust as our comrades violently recoiled at our trophy. Once we found everyone again, re-lit the fire and splinted a sergeants ankle it was explained to us that armadillos are the only known carrier of leprosy in the United States. To which Muddy’s reply was, “Oh, well…how about we smear the MRE beef stew on it, would it be okay?”