Armadillos have migrated north [FONT class=byLine][FONT color=#211c1c size=1]
By [/FONT][A class=storyByline href="mailto:
[email protected]"]
[FONT color=#900000]Ken Leiser[/FONT][/A][/FONT]
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ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH[/FONT]
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Sunday, Aug. 13 2006[/FONT]
Bernice Warning was enjoying a Sunday morning on her backyard patio in Fairview
Heights a few weeks back when she saw movement in a flower bed.
What emerged was a gray-silver, armored creature she figured was about 15
inches from the tip of its long snout to the end of its pencil-like tail.
Warning went to fetch her husband, but by the time she returned, the armadillo
was already waddling across the grass to her neighbor's yard.
"I wish I had a camera," she said.
Armadillos began pushing into southern Missouri in the early 1980s, but
sightings have been rare in St. Louis and surrounding counties until recently.
The small armored animals had long been associated with warmer, Southern states
but have shown they can adapt to winter temperatures in central Missouri and
Southern Illinois.
"They are here to stay," said Professor Lynn Robbins of Missouri State
University.
Earlier this year, a Ladue woman was surprised to spot one of the nine-banded
armadillos digging up part of her yard, said Tom Meister, a wildlife damage
biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation in the St. Louis area.
The football-sized creatures have big claws and a long nose, and they feast on
beetles, grubs and earthworms they dig up. It is said they can smell insects
through six inches of soil. Their handiwork has left some yards looking as if a
"plow had gone through," Meister said.
"They are becoming more and more common," Meister said, particularly in
Crawford and Washington counties, on the fringes of the St. Louis area.
Because the armadillo is a non-native species, Meister said, there aren't many
restrictions preventing a Missouri property owner from shooting or trapping an
armadillo suspected of causing damage - although it rarely goes that far.
There have been a growing number of armadillo sightings in Southern Illinois,
especially in the last five years, said Clay Nielsen, a research scientist at
Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Since reaching Texas in the mid-1800s, the armadillo has pushed into the
southeast and now the lower Midwest. Despite the animal's preference for warmer
temperatures, Nielsen said "it is too early to say" whether global warming is
contributing to the expansion.
"It has been a slow, gradual spread over a 150-year period," Nielsen said.
Robbins' research shows that the northern march has averaged several miles a
year.
Despite initial concerns that the armadillo was a threat to quail and turkey
eggs, Robbins determined that the armadillo caused no damage to native
wildlife. In fact, other animals - wood rats, box turtles and snakes - use the
armadillo tunnels.
Armadillos don't hibernate and continue to feed on insects through the winter.
But heavy snowpacks, extreme cold and lack of rainfall make it harder to reach
their food supply. Some experts say that will likely prevent them from pushing
farther north.
Robbins figured heavy snows several years ago would have knocked the population
back, but the armadillos were present after the snow melted.
So far, Robbins said, they have weathered Missouri winters by sticking to
places where ice and snow aren't so heavy - like the edge of streams and
beneath large trees. They rustle beneath leaf litter to find bugs, even in cold
weather.
The critters are deceptively fast and can jump three to four feet into the air
when startled. The most reliable evidence of their arrival is the occasional
sight of an armadillo that has been hit by a car.
Cindy Bohnenstiehl, executive director of the Wildlife Center of Missouri in
Ballwin, said two armadillos had been brought to the rescue and rehabilitation
center in the past year. One was already dead; the second was stabilized but
did not survive its injuries, she said.
Two years ago, Missouri Department of Transportation maintenance workers in
Franklin County weren't seeing armadillos among the road kill they clear from
highways. Now they see about one a week, said spokeswoman Linda Wilson.
By contrast, maintenance workers in the Department of Transportation's
12-county region near Springfield, Mo., see them "every day," said spokesman
Bob Edwards. The sightings seem to increase each year.
"And you don't see them live very often," he said.
[img style="FONT-SIZE: 12px" height=127 alt="" src="vny!://images.stltoday.com/stltoday/resources/armadillo235.jpg" width=235 border=0 size="1"]
[FONT class=search style="FONT-SIZE: 10px" size=1]A nine-lined Armadillo found Barry County, Missouri. The nine-line Armadillo is the only species in the state.[/FONT]
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(Missouri Department of Conservation)[/FONT]
