Armadillo has had bumpy road to iconic status
Mammal has become one of the most recognizable Texas brands
You’d be forgiven for thinking the natural habitat of the nine-banded armadillo is the side of the highway. That its natural state is, in fact, dead, its little paws outstretched in a belated supplication. I didn’t see a live one until I’d lived in Texas for 31⁄2 years, and when I finally did, I pointed to the brush with a gasp so guttural that my companion thought I saw a body.
For an animal that can’t seem to master the art of avoiding a Mack truck, the armadillo has become one of the most recognizable Texas brands, up there with Willie Nelson and the longhorn and the prickly pear cactus. I couldn’t help but find it incongruous that a creature synonymous with roadkill had come to grace so many bumper stickers and keychains and T-shirts. Perhaps it was because I am a Texas transplant. Or perhaps it really was a mystery, even to those who said “y’all” before it became trendy.
I set off to unravel the mystique of the armadillo, so naturally, I started with a man named Armadillo Jim. Armadillo Jim is an Oklahoma resident who hasn’t lost his Texas drawl and possesses somewhere between one and 10 armadillos. (Asking a man how many armadillos he has, Armadillo Jim said, is like asking a rancher how many head of cattle he runs: Simply not done.)
Armadillo Jim answered my other questions with a parable.
“Everybody knows why the chicken crossed the road,” he said.
I told Armadillo Jim I didn’t know.
“To prove to the armadillo it can be done,” he explained.
Right, I said. Of course.
A Texas symbol
The symbolism of the armadillo has been as expansive and messy — and controversial — as Texas itself. A close cousin to the anteater and the sloth, the armadillo has been a stand-in for the anti-war movement, counterculture, outlaw country music, cowardice, ruggedness, uniqueness and toughness. It’s so recognizably Texan that, in 1975, a few Texpats in New York City put on a National Armadillo Day, complete with three armadillos flown in from Houston. (“Think of them as hard-shell poodles,” the man in charge of ferrying the armadillos begged an airline representative who was unsure about letting them fly. The airline relented.) Nearly 40 years later, a group in Central Texas decided Punxsutawney Phil wasn’t Texan enough for the Lone Star State and began predicting the weather with an armadillo called Bee Cave Bob.
While the creature now holds the title of official state small mammal, the nine-banded armadillo has withstood perhaps more than its fair share of vitriol over its 175 years as a Texan. They have been stewed, fried, fricasseed, served as a side dish and paired with a light, dry wine. They have been shot, trapped, forced to fight tiger cubs and badgers, and turned into baskets and boots.
They have been called pesky, odd, malodorous, dumb, primitive, stupid, timid, useless, noxious and a nuisance; accused of having “no redeeming social value”; slandered as a “lowly, decrepit, squirming thing” and an “ugly, pea-brained creature”; and declared, in the starkest of terms, a “God-awful animal.” Even compliments have the sting of a backhand: One armadillo proponent observed that the creatures are “so ugly they’re cute.”
Armadillo Jim’s friend Suzanne McPhee has nothing but genuine praise for the animal. She’s worked with armadillos for the better part of four decades and said they still manage to put her on the ground laughing.
“I have my armadillos out here, and everyone goes, ‘What are you doing with armadillos in California?’” she said. “And I say, ‘Everyone knows no Texan leaves the state without taking their armadillos.’” Right, I said. Of course.
Like any veteran athletes, Quesadillo and Speed Bump adhered to strict pre-competition rituals. They rested under a black tarp in hay-filled crates while trade conference attendees trickled into the bar, reaching for passed hors d’oeuvres and clustering in drink lines.
“Armadillo races!” one man in a red gingham shirt shouted between cornhole rounds, pointing at the Plexiglass enclosure with its sawdust floor. “Really? SICK.”
“Are they there? Can we see them?”
“Not yet,” said Swift Sparks, a bearded man dressed in a red pearl-snap shirt. His father, Sparky Sparks, owns the Sparks Agency, which promises to bring TEXperts and their associated activities — including armadillo racing — to your events.
The sky darkened. The bistro lights swayed in the October breeze. Swift Sparks pulled the tarp off the crates, took out his megaphone and lassoed the crowd.
“Welcome to another heat of armadillo racing, the sport of kings. So come on, gather around; we’re about to get started,” Sparks proclaimed. “We’ve got highperformance athletes. We’ve got vicious competition.” The attendees hurried over to the armadillos. “Sweet Jesus.”
“Are they fast?”
“Maybe if they roll.”
“I’m from Connecticut. I don’t know.”
(I’m from Massachusetts. I didn’t know, either.) Another TEXpert opened the crates. Quesadillo meandered out, took in the crowd and promptly went back inside. Speed Bump didn’t bother to move.
Sparks fired armadillo facts at the onlookers. They’re essentially blind but have a sense of smell. They’re mammals that give birth to identical quadruplets. They can hold their breath for up to six minutes. The nine-banded armadillo is the only armadillo species in North America.
The crowd waited, phones at the ready, for the armadillos to emerge.
Crossing the border
The history of the Texas armadillo can best be summarized in the chorus of an early ’80s tune called “Armadillo Country”: “They crossed the barren desert / and swam the Rio Grande / to burn their mark on Texas / the armadillo brand.”
The gist of the song is about right. Sometime after Texas declared independence in 1836, the nine-banded armadillo, a native of South America, scurried across the river and made itself known to settlers. Newspapers in the late 1800s breathlessly reported sightings of the “bizarre beasts.” Dillos, alive or dead, were displayed in town squares as novelties.
Nine-banded armadillos are, objectively, fascinating creatures. They’re lone rangers save during mating season when a male will follow a female until the deed is done. The three-banded armadillo, which resides in South America, is the only armadillo that can curl into a complete ball; the nine-banded armadillo must settle for more of a tuck. Their shell isn’t a shell in the turtleish sense of the word. Officially called the carapace, the top of an armadillo is made up of bony plates covered by a thick layer of skin (The plates create the armadillo’s pleated “bands”). When startled, they sometimes jump three feet into the air, and that gets them walloped when a car is the vehicle of their fear.
“In Texas, people love them,” said Colleen McDonough, a retired professor of biology who spent years researching armadillos. “People always came up to me and told me their armadillo stories with very much affection. And so I thought this was kind of a universal attitude — no!”
When McDonough studied armadillos in Georgia, she said, all anyone ever wanted to know was how to get rid of them.
The armadillo became a Texport in the literal sense almost as early as it arrived. A man named Charles Apelt, who saw his first armadillo after he immigrated to the state and promptly stoned it to death, created an armadillo basket factory in 1895, selling as many as 40,000 in a year. A national 1928 Legionnaires meeting in Texas promised attendees could “show their friends back home the armadillo baskets, the six-gallon hats, the pot plants of cactus.” A 1960 Sears ad teased drapes “made of durable, washable, beautiful armadillo cloth” — with custom slipcovers to match.
The symbolic nine-banded armadillo rocketed onto the national scene in the 1970s with the establishment of the Armadillo World Headquarters, a music venue in Austin where acts such as ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughan and AC/DC played to crowds surrounded by armadillo murals. It became synonymous with the countercultural movement of the decade, a place where peaceniks and cowboys came together as the Vietnam War raged.
Artist Jim Franklin rose to fame for his drawings of armadillos, which included album covers, concert posters and a sketch of a giant armadillo doing unspeakable things to the Capitol. Outlaw country star Gary P. Nunn wrote an entire song about how he was sick of London and wanted to be “home with the