🚀 go-pugleaf

"Squanto" <larazausa@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<3e5acc7c_2@corp.newsgroups.com>...
> For your viewing pleasure I submit the following for discussion. But, for
> the "real story" you MUST substitute the word "armadillo" with "illegal
> alien."
> 
> 
> 
> Sighting adds to evidence armadillos slowly moving in
> 
>     THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
> 
> Mel Wiens was a little confused when an employee called to ask if armadillos
> were native to Nebraska.
> 
> "I don't think so," the general manager of a Holdrege irrigation-equipment
> dealership said. "And he said, 'I'm looking at one.'"
> 
> Wiens thought his employee, Toby Clayton, was surely confusing an opossum
> for an armadillo but still drove two miles east of Holdrege to be certain.
> 
> He took his digital camera and ended up with some snapshots of an armadillo
> rooting for bugs and larvae along a ditch line.
> 
> "Every six to eight inches it went down and burrowed," Wiens said.
> 
> His attempt for a face-on photo spooked the armadillo into the bushes.
> 
> The sighting Wednesday in south-central Nebraska, about 25 miles southwest
> of Kearney, is confirmation that the animals common to the southern United
> States are migrating northward, said Hugh Genoways, a natural sciences
> professor with the University of Nebraska State Museum.
> 
> Armadillos first showed up in extreme southern Texas in 1850 and have moved
> north since. They are now reproducing in central Kansas.
> 
> It's not a wholesale invasion into Nebraska, however, since only a few
> sightings are reported yearly.
> 
> "The armadillos are clearly charging in this direction, even if it's only
> one or two a year," Genoways said.
> 
> The first documented state sighting was south of Arapahoe, near the
> Kansas-Nebraska border, in 1972. Since then, eight specimens have been
> recovered with numerous other visual sightings.
> 
> The farthest north an armadillo body has been found was one that burrowed
> into a haystack on an Ord farm in 1986.
> 
> In the last two years, armadillos have been recovered near Peru and just
> west of Lincoln, after several cars on Interstate 80 had run over it.
> 
> A visual sighting was made within the last five years in Keya Paha County,
> in northern Nebraska near the South Dakota border.
> 
> The common perceptions that armadillos showed up in Nebraska after stowing
> away on cattle trucks or being brought here as pets are no longer valid.
> 
> "We're getting enough of them coming in now, clearly that's not what's
> happening," Genoways said.
> 
> It also was once believed that Nebraska's winters were too harsh for
> armadillos, which wouldn't be able to find any insects to eat.
> 
> But armadillos do not live on bugs alone, Genoways said. They can survive a
> winter on what combines miss in the cornfields. They also can escape the
> worst of the cold days by burrowing into anything that will give them
> shelter, like a haystack.
> 
> "They are pretty hardy beasts," he said.
> 
> Their forays into Nebraska might be prompted by the recent milder winters,
> or it could be a case of the species looking for its northern limit.
> 
> "It hasn't reached it yet, or if it has, it hasn't settled down enough for
> us to know," Genoways said.
> 
> The armadillos recovered in Nebraska so far have been mostly males, but more
> females are expected to soon follow.
> 
> "We feel pretty confident ultimately we may have a viable population," said
> Genoways, adding that armadillo meat resembles the taste of pork.
> 
> And he, for one, can't wait.
> 
> "They're really tasty on the barbecue," Genoways said.


A major problem is that the "sheepel" remain too weakened to protest.
Of course, if that gas price hits $3.00 and the job market gets
tighter they may get a little backbone.

Burt
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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