First Day

First day of school for my junior and eighth grader. Time is flying! 

Arch Nemesis

 I never knew I could hate something quite like I hate the little turd of an armadillo that lives in our yard. He wakes up each evening and tries to figure out how to piss me off for the following day. Usually it involves using his tiny cone shaped nose to root around for grubs right under anything freshly planted. He'll leave piles of uprooted hostas in his wake that I shuffle around replanting each morning. I find it absolutely infuriating. 

I started doing research on how to catch the little turd and found that they can be caught with live traps but it's difficult because you can't bait a live trap. They have to just be "funneled" into them using boards. Once an armadillo finds a wall it will travel down that wall so this works for getting them into cages, in theory. 

I found his lair out in one of the perennial beds. A giant basketball sized opening gave it away. So during the day I took several old boards and surrounded it and put the live trap as the only opening. It took two days but I finally found him curled up sleeping in the live trap one morning. I was ecstatic, even doing a little dance. 

I put him and his cage in the back of my truck and covered him with an old towel and we went for a nice 20 minute drive south where I found a nice dirt road on a stretch with no farms or house and lots of trees and a stream. I told him it's a much nicer place to live and good luck. He scurried off and I felt a relief that perhaps my gardening days would be more peaceful.

Or so I though. Two days later more hostas strewn about. No I don't think the original armadillo made his way back, I do think there was more than one. So now I have to go about figuring out how to catch another one. I'm nearing the point of having Sean sit outside in a chair with a rifle but I hate the idea of killing one. They are kind of cute in a strange way. My sister said they looked like a pig in a shell. 

Oh well.