Armadillos

Four years ago when I first visited Tyler in Montgomery he said there were armadillos in the neighborhood. I had read children's books from my favorite author, Jan Brett, who always wrote about these interesting creatures and I was fascinated with them, having never seen one myself.

Looking for armadillos four years ago...I admit I was not really expecting to find one but it was a fun adventure.

So one night I asked Tyler to take me out to find an armadillo. He amused me (later to tell me that he thought I was strange for wanting to go find one at night) but we didn't find any. In the next few years on our many road trips, he'd point one or two out to me. However, I wanted to see one that was alive, not one that was dead on the side of the road. 

Last week I saw a picture on facebook of...you guessed it! An armadillo. It was here in Ave Maria and I was thinking to myself why haven't I seen one yet? A few days ago Tyler and I were walking back from Mass to the cafeteria and we saw a group of people looking at something in the bushes and taking pictures. I didn't think it was an alligator so I ran to the spot and here's what I saw:

My very first armadillo. I don't think they are cute but I think they are just fascinating. I didn't know anything about them so I looked them up and thanks to Wikipedia here's what I learned:

• The word armadillo means "little armored one" in Spanish.

• The Aztecs called them āyōtōchtli which means "turtle rabbit."

• The armadillo prefers to build burrows in moist soil near the creeks and streams around which it lives and feeds. 

• Armadillos have short legs, but can move quite quickly, and have the ability to remain under water for as long as six minutes. Because of the density of its armor, an armadillo will sink in water unless it swallows air, inflating its stomach to twice normal size and raising its buoyancy above that of water, allowing it to swim across narrow streams and ditches 
• Armadillos have very poor eyesight, and use their keen sense of smell to hunt. 

Now we all know more about armadillos!