Hot nine-banded death

The yard around my home has been inundated recently with armadillos.  Like a armored brigade, they’ve come in and laid waste to the yard, digging the place up like crazy.  The drought we’ve had is hard enough on the grass, but these leprous stumps have made it really a sad state of affairs.

Not wanting to necessarily eradicate the species (at first), I sought alternative means of doing away with them.  They make traps and such, but that’s depending on them being stupid enough (or me lucky enough) for them to wander into the opening of the snare.  Having tried this in the past, it’s only effective if you place it adjacent to a burrow.  Someone said putting lye out would kill them, but it’d also kill any other living thing in the vicinity.  The last recommendation was to just shoot them when they pop out.

Being the only sure way to annihilate these things, I’ve been staking out the house at night.  I actually bought a brand-new spotlight from Sears Roebuck to simplify the task further.  Fortunately, my brother left his .30-30 here when he moved some years back, and it’s a perfect weapon with which to wage war on these critters…it’s pretty easy to handle, has a good peep sight, and tends to drop ’em like a bad habit in one shot.

To date, I’ve tagged a half-dozen, with my most recent successful foray being fifteen minutes ago. Despite the fact that I’m generally against killing animals needlessly, these things really tick me off.

Hopefully as my shooting improves with my .357 Magnum, I can start working with it and get some better practice using it.