Sending My Problem Packing
by Alex McRae

North Georgia is suffering through one of the worst droughts on record. Last week it finally hit home.

I wasn't happy when the lawn died of thirst, but then the drought presented an even worse problem...armadillos.

They've been around a few years, but I didn't notice they were eating my personal real estate until I came home the other day to discover my yard had more divots than a par-3 golf course in Panama City. A friend diagnosed the condition as 'dillo damage. The sight of the ravaged rye was heartbreaking, but when I discovered the armadillos were also eating my cats' food, I vowed to solve the problem once and for all. As soon as I figured out how.

Years ago on the way back from the beach, I stopped at a gas station in south Alabama. The front of the place was packed with snacks. The rear end had enough guns and ammunition to outfit a third world revolution.

While I was there another guy came in mad as a hornet. He went to the clerk and said, "Armadillos are killing my yard. How do I kill them?"

The clerk didn't skip a beat.

"Shoot 'em," he said.

In years past, I would have applied the buckshot solution. But now I'm surrounded by nice neighbors and lots of pets, so gunfirewouldn't be polite, much less safe.

I looked for other solutions. A few minutes on Google was all it took to gather tons of armadillo elimination information. Favorite methods included: elimination of food source, trapping, shooting and repelling.

Shooting was out, elimination of food source meant starving the cats, too, but the "repelling" category offered an interesting product: "Shake-Away armadillo garden repellent." The company website said..."It is a powerful granular product that... contains the scent of the pest's worst enemy, the coyote."

In other words, this stuff is dried coyote tee-tee.

I'm not totally opposed to outdoor elimination, especially when it comes to animals. But it didn't seem right to add urine of any kind to the yard on purpose. And I know enough deer hunters to know that while coyote urine may scare armadillos, it's likely to attract other coyotes, and who needs that?

That left one alternative. Cage traps are relatively cheap and humane and easy to operate. I figured if the trap caught a stray dog or cat, I'd release it the next day and no harm done. If an armadillo came knocking...I was in business.

The problem was, what to do with it? Obviously, releasing a trapped armadillo back into the yard wouldn't work. And I didn't want to dump it in another neighborhood, although I know a few places where an armadillo would be an improvement.

I gave it some thought and finally came up with a solution. I call it Alex's Armadillo Relocation Program, or AARP.

It works this way. I catch an armadillo, then ship it back to where armadillos are welcome. This one wasn't hard to figure since it's common knowledge armadillos are as revered in Texas as the Dalai Lama is in Tibet (or at Emory University).

The question was who to send it to. I don't know many Texans. George Bush already has Cindy Sheehan in his yard. I was afraid if I sent it to Wilie Nelson he'd try to smoke it. And if it went to the Ft. Worth Stockyard, there's a chance it might wind up in the national food supply next week. Texas was out. That left one alternative. And shipping an armadillo to Norfolk, Virginia, isn't near as expensive as I expected. I'm sure the animal lovers at PETA will welcome my little armored buddy with open arms.

If not, I know a guy who would be glad to lend them a 12-gauge.