Our First Armadillo

Warning: This post contains some roadkill photos. Heck, it's a post about armadillos. If it didn't mention roadkill, it wouldn't be about armadillos now, would it? Let's get that first DOA 'dillo out of the way:

There, that wasn't so bad. This poor fella managed to get himself killed in a beach parking lot. That takes some doing on both killer and killee's parts. Armadillos would be OK if they'd crouch down when a car passes over them, but instead they startle and jump straight up, bonking against the chassis and essentially commiting suicide. Armadillos are capable of leaping 4' straight up into the air, so you can imagine the forces when this power is applied to a speeding automobile.

I have always, always wanted to see an armadillo in the wild. Any armadillo (and there are 20 species worldwide, all but one of them in Latin America). In the southern US, we are blessed (or cursed, depending on who you ask) with a single armadillo species, the nine-banded Dasypus novemcinctus.

It's just so cool to have an edentate in the United States. "Edentate" means "toothless," though the nine-banded armadillo is hardly toothless. Here are the weird blade-like teeth of the hapless roadkill I found and examined in Florida. They stood up like an edge cut with pinking shears, more crenulations than teeth. Gross, I know, but look at the teeth, please.

 

Seriously: having an edentate in the US is like our having a flamingo, a spoonbill, an antelope, a lion. It's a lone representative of a cool order we might not otherwise have. D. novemcinctus ranges from Argentina to the southern United States, and it seems to have relatively recently colonized the US, having first been seen here in 1849. Armadillos naturally colonized Florida, but became extinct for unknown reasons. Modern Florida nine-banded armadillos are thought to descend from a pair that escaped from a roadside zoo about 50 years ago in Cocoa, as well as at least one earlier release. Knowing they aren't exactly "native," even if they were historically in Florida, seems to give some people license to hate them. Lots of people hate any animal that digs huge holes, so the cards are definitely stacked against the little armored one. Of all the world's species of armadillos, only the nine-banded has managed to thrive and extend its range. Go novemcinctus!

In deference to Floridians who will doubtless give me their $.02, it's easy to love an animal when it's not excavating your back yard.

But get this: The giant armadillo, Dasypus bellus, once ranged as far north as the Ohio River Valley!! No wonder I was so hot to see an armadillo, even if only its smaller cousin.

Armadillo Online is an amazing compendium of cool armadillo information. Like this: The nine-banded armadillo has a unique salivary bladder surrounded by muscle, a tappable reservoir of gluey saliva that it uses to snare ants, termites, and other insects as it eats.

Did you know that armadillos always have four young, and they are all identical, all the same sex and genetically alike? All four come from the same egg, which divides into four embryos. This makes them good lab animals, because where else are you going to get four genetically identical siblings every time? You've got your experimental animals and your control in one litter. However,  though they quickly become tame, they don't do very well in captivity.

They're also sought after and captured because armadillos can catch and carry leprosy, so a great deal of what we know about transmission of this disease comes from armadillo research. People go out with nets and catch 'dillos and sell them to labs. Unfortunately, people who handle a lot of armadillos sometimes get leprosy from them, yuccch. The armadillo has a weak immune system and an extraordinarily low body temperature -92 to 95 degrees, which is thought to make them susceptible to leprosy. Reason enough not to keep a pet armadillo!

Leprosy, a dreadful lesiony lumpy skin disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and M. lepromatosis, is now treatable with a multi-drug regime of rifampicin, dapsone, and clofazimine given over 12 months. However, the Third World still hosts leper colonies where people suffering from the disease are segregated--over 1,000 colonies exist in India alone. I flew over an island that's given over to people suffering from leprosy in Guyana, in South America. It's still part of the reality for many less affluent countries. That hit me hard, circling over that island just an ocean away from Florida, but decades removed in medical advancement. We are incredibly fortunate in the U.S. I try never to forget that.

Armadillos sleep up to 16 hours a day. Maybe this is why I'd never seen one until this trip to Florida. I've been all over south Texas too, but no go until now. As the kids and I headed to the beach one evening, I saw the trundling shape of my first 'dillo near a busy intersection. I whooped with joy and pulled over to document it.

photo by Phoebe Linnea Thompson

Absolutely beautiful it was, a perfect specimen.

I was impressed by its muley ears and perfect carapace; its birdlike snoot and tiny eyes. It spent 90 per cent of its time with its nose deep in the grass, looking for insects to eat, so I have dozens of photos but only a few where you can see its little eye. This is one of them.

More armadillo exploration anon.

Fun on Biolab Road

A young roseate spoonbill greeted us as we turned onto Biolab Road.  What an alluring name for a road!

                                This is what a black vulture does when it's really, really windy.

I like how he's using his tail as a brake, and he's clinging for all he's worth to the snag. Vulture feet are not strong in the clutching department, which is why they have to carry prey in their beaks.

Black vultures are a Florida fixture, and they call southwest Ohio their year-round home, but they're still pretty unusual to see in southeast Ohio, where we live. I have a feeling it's only a matter of time before they completely colonize my area. We have roadkill aplenty. You could live on roadkill around here, if you wanted to. Which I do not.

Bill had told me that Biolab Road was a must-see, and we were not disappointed. Phoebe said it led to the beach, and that seemed like a meet adventure for a mom and two cubs...drive down the road and wind up on Cape Canaveral's beach. We drove and drove, rolling slowly along, taking in the incredible wildlife along the way.

The kids loved the reddish egret, especially when I told them that birders call it the "drunken clown" for the way it staggers about in the shallows, following the lightning-fast movement of schools of fish which only it can see.

It throws out its wings for balance, making a spectacle of itself. To someone who doesn't know that it's fishing, it looks crazy, possessed, drunk.

And then it plunges its rapier bill straight down into the water to stab at little fishies.

 A far more placid feeding style distinguishes the roseate spoonbill. I felt incredibly lucky to be able to show this bird to my babies.

The spoonbills are more filter feeders, running that great appendage through the silt and snapping closed on whatever lives within.

They swing their great heads side to side, slowly sweeping through the shallows. 

They make pass after pass in an unconsciously lovely ballet.

Earlier in the day, we'd lucked upon a preening group of spoonbills along Black Point Wildlife Drive in Merritt Island NWR.  I quickly deployed the Leica scope and camera to digiscope their sickly green heads, ruby eyes and glorious crimson shoulders.

Could there be a much more convincing link between the dinosaurs and today's birds?

It was not much of a stretch to imagine duck-billed dinosaurs snapping to attention at the approach of a pack of Deinonychus, especially for Liam.

So long did we watch and admire the wading birds and snoozing gators that it finally became clear that we would never reach the beach before dark

and we decided that that was fine with us, because what could be better than this pastel sunset, with us all breathing the salt air, appreciating the heartbreakingly beautiful color. Color has been gone from our lives for months and months. We decided that all our color had drained down into Florida. We're very anxious to get it back, as rainy day follows rainy day and the crocuses struggle to bloom.

Phoebe snapped me in pursuit of egrets

and I snapped her in pursuit of sunsets

and it was all dreamily beautiful. We hated to see that sun sink, but it was kind enough to go behind some cutout palm trees, delighting Liam who thought it was time for the pterodactyl to swoop through, cackling, at any moment.

A snowy egret punched a white hole in the inky marsh as we said goodbye to another Florida day.

All landscape and car interior photos taken with  my Canon G-12, chunky little point and shoot genius box.

Liam's First Alligator

I will not lie. Liam's first and main reason for wanting to go to Florida was not together time with his mom and sister, although he loves that. No, he wanted to see a ten-foot-long lizard. He really, really wanted to see an alligator. So from the moment we came in over the runway at Orlando airport, we were straining our orbs for eyebumps in every ditch and puddle. But it would be a couple of days before we got lucky.

Driving along Black Point Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island NWR, I finally spotted the prehistoric pile of scalage that said "gator" to my unaccustomed eye. It would have been hard to miss this one, hauled out as he was on a warm winter's day. Holy smokes!

It was all I could do to get Liam to take his eyes off it long enough to snap the photo of a boy with longing, for now, fulfilled.

We got out the spotting scope to get a better look at this dozing beauty.

I don't know why, but every time I see a dozing 'gator, my first thought is that it has hauled out of the water to die. They just look dead. When they close their eyes, the eye seems to sink back into the head, and they really, really look dead. You can't discern any respiration. A sleeping gator defines "inert."

Until the Science Chimp bleats like a little lost fawn separated from its mama and maybe about to try to cross the creek...oh, hello there. Sorry to bother you, but we didn't want our first gator viewing to turn into a wake.

Thus satisfied that the 'gator was quite alive and thinking about venison, we moved the scope so the kids and I could appreciate that armored tail. Dinosaurs live!

It was to be a wonderful evening for 'gators. We proceeded from Black Point to the alluringly named Biolab Road, where a molten sunset pointed up the scalation on three more beautiful gators.

It was really too beautiful and primeval to be believed. And these weren't babies, either. Liam's first  gator was the biggest--gettin' on 12 feet, we guessed. 

This one, maybe 9 feet...about the length of my canoe...eek! I wondered what it would be like to canoe around a beast like that. Maybe FloridaCracker can tell us. Does your heart race when one swirls under you? Heck, a big carp can scare the granola out of me, rocking my boat...what about a gator longer than your own conveyance??

I couldn't resist a shot of Firehair admiring this gorgeous animal.

Another...maybe 7 feet.

Another conservation success story. It's hard to believe we almost hunted the American alligator into extinction, just for the bumpy "leather" it lent to fancy purses and cowboy boots. It seems so archaic, so ridiculous to exterminate such a magnificent beast for things like that. It seems so...human of us. I grew up thinking I'd never see an alligator, or a bald eagle, or a wood stork...they were all but gone in the mid-1960's.

Endangered species legislation works. Alligators, bald eagles, and wood storks are back. Brown pelicans, too--they were once on the brink of extinction, as amazing as that seems. It's just too bad that so many truly endangered species are languishing in the Endangered Species Waiting Lounge, left unprotected because it's economically inconvenient to list them.

 How could we keep taking the tops off Appalachian mountains if the cerulean warbler that lives on them were finally listed as an endangered species, and we were legally bound to protect its habitat? Better not list that one. See, that's how it works. Once we saw what a powerful conservation tool the ESA could be, it was imperative to remove its teeth.

What if we had to legally acknowledge that polar bears and Pacific walruses are endangered because their pack ice habitat is melting out from under them? Legally they're listed as threatened, so we're not bound to do anything to reverse this deeply alarming phenomenon. They're in the waiting room, too. And what about the seals, mainstay of polar bears, that need the pack ice for pupping? Do we expect them and the walruses to simply switch overnight to hauling out on land? Who needs a bunch of pack ice? We don't. So what if they do? 

Having gotten a bit off track, I am thankful for alligators and the legislation that allowed their populations to recover. Well over a million alligators now populate the ditches and swamps of the Southeast.  And I'm deeply thankful that there are still places where you can take your kids to see the oversized scaly wonders of the natural world. 

See it while it's here, folks.