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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: Homestead <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] The 'Diller Diaries
  • Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:25:23 -0500

Here at Heartwood the armadillo invasion has reached affronting conditions. Daily one is appalled at the plethora of tiny-to- substantial craters where one walks or views. The better the soil, the greater the depredation.

These conditions can no longer be countenanced; it is clearly time for action. Contemplating potential plans, one wishes for another Dax, perhaps two of his one-crunch abilities. Alas, that plan will have to sit on the shelf for now.

A week or three ago Benny and I teamed up and blew away one of the armored marauders. That action ill becomes a plan due to the need to interrupt one's sleep to do the action. Next?

Having acquired a modicum of diller decimation details I have now implemented a plan. I have set two live traps, facing east and west, against the stone wall that creates the Christina garden. One against the wall, with a big oak plank angled out and braced by a step ladder lying against it. The other sits against the first but facing the other direction, with a second step ladder encouraging shuffles into the trap entrance.

Two nights, two catches.

Next issue, disposal. Holding to the permaculture perogative that any item best serves multiple purposes, I have decided to conduct scientific research. Well, okay, pseudo-scientific.

I have long read that armadillos, on encountering a body of water in their travels simply hold their breath and walk across the bottom to the other side. As it was in writing I of course held this to be the truth.

So here's my report. Immersed in the stream, the first armadillo held its breath for 3.5 minutes, the second for 4 minutes, for a pseudo- average of 3.75 minutes.

So far, it seems to me that the person who first wrote the business about dillers holding their breath and meandering across the river bottom, and whose words have since been spread far and wide, either had been drinking or had a fisherman's tendency or had observed the activity at a very narrow stream.

Further research will be reported.



  • [Homestead] The 'Diller Diaries, Gene GeRue, 10/15/2007

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