Armadillo Attack

Armadillos aren't just a Texas thing. In Mississippi, armadillos are everywhere. They are not cute, and I think I would rather come across a grizzly bear than an armadillo if I had the choice. Armadillo is Spanish for "little armored one," and there couldn't be a more fitting name for them.

Most of my 25-minute drive to work is spent on the picturesque Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444-mile single-lane highway (that, interestingly enough, Meriwether Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition mysteriously died on...more on this later) that links Natchez to somewhere in Tennessee. Locals warned me to lookout for deer throughout the year and watch for cops, because a speeding ticket on the Trace will set you back about 350 bones.

One sun-shining morning on the trace I see something in my lane about 100 feet ahead. It's about the size of an armadillo, and unfortunately, this doesn't register, and I barely think about swerving to avoid it (I do have a terrible history of running over large objects). The next thing I know, I've run it over, but it gets stuck under my car, and I am dragging an armadillo under my car. My emotions are a mix of frustration, disgust, and horror. I drag it all the way to school.

I am steaming about this all day, and I tell my co-workers about it. Did you know that when armadillos get scared, like one may get when confronted with an approaching sedan in its path? It jumps straight up into the air. This must have been a handy defense back in the day when there were no cars, but I think it's high-time this creature found a new defense, because they jump just high enough to jump into the grill of a car (mine must have been slow, because I don't think it jumped).

Anyways, I make my carpool buddy hitch up the car with the tire changing thing after school to get the armadillo out, because there is no way I am going to drive another 30 minutes with an armadillo under my car, and apparently AAA's services do not include armadillo removal. Unfortunately, at this point in the mid-afternoon of late August, the armadillo stinks to high heavens, and there are about a thousand ants crawling. Eventually it gets dislodged.

But you know what that armadillo did to my car? It destroyed the bottom of my car with its hard shell! I take it into the shop, and the words "Well, I was driving on the Trace..." barely leave my lips, and the mechanic says, "You got an armadillo problem?" Aghast at the thought that this occurs so often mechanics expect a helpless girl with an armadillo problem everyday, I nod. $200 later, I have a new nemesis in armadillos, and I am not sorry that armadillo died.