"Dillo Trappin' in Texas

I just had to take this pic just before leaving my parent's house in south Texas. This, my friends, is an armadillo trap that my dad built.



My dad and his neighbors had, apparently, been inundated with an influx of nasty armadillos lately.

In case any of you aren't familiar with armadillo infestations, let me, a genuine South Texas ex-native big boy, educate you with the proclivities regarding the Texas armadillo:

1. Armadillos like to burrow into my dad's lawn.

2. Texan sons don't take kindly to seeing their dad's lawns burrowed into. Even if they're from Chicago.

3. Texan sons enjoy knowin' their dad's've takin' care of any-and-all armadillos.

Really!

There have been a huge infestation of armadillos in my dad's neck of the woods. They're nasty, big and no-good creatures. They dig up well-manicured lawns and belong way aways in the woods.

My daddy enjoys building things. He always has. I like that about him.


When I was eight years old and and my little brother was six, daddy built us this giant fourteen-foot play-tower. It was this monster wooden tower-thing that was embedded in cement, had a climbing ladder, a knotted rope and a galvanized/wooden slide that attracted kids from a fifteen-block area. That was almost forty years ago! You can't say I don't appreciate his creativity.

As teenagers, my friend, Tim ended up in the emergency room, twice, on account of us trying to turn the wooden slide into a roller coaster.

Hint: Do not saw skateboards in half and nail them to the bottom of a sawed-off dog house to make a roller-coaster car and roll it down a 14-ft galvanized-steel slide. The ending doesn't work. Especially with Tim in it. Repeated attempts are especially not advised.


So, he built an armadillo trap. The 'dillos enjoy cave-like holes that smell like armadillos, so he built a cave-like wooden hole with a wooden tickey-pole in the middle that would release wooden traps on both ends, tossed an armadillo in it for eight hours to poop and pee in it overnight to make the attract an armadillo and 'viola!

You wake up with an armadillo in the morning!

It works!

My dad has caught eleven armadillos which he's taken in his pick-up truck and released into the woods across in the the nearby Guadalupe river.

But sometimes, my dad gives them to the woman down the street who does my step-mother's hair. The woman likes to butcher armadillos. I can't say I've tasted her 'dillos, but my step-mother's been awfully pretty for thirty years!


Really. You don't get more Texan than that.