Yard Rage

Texas has lots of symbols and icons… pickup trucks, lone star beer, longhorn steers and armadillos to name just a few. Believe me these are not the warm fuzzies played out in soft plush toys. I am talking about armadillos. This cast iron armored menace can lead to many late night escapades at my house. A single armadillo can totally tear a yard up in one evening. Being nocturnal they attack in the wee hours of the morning, then under the guise of looking for slugs and bugs, they can totally demolish my whole yard. This of course mainly happens when festivities are planned and after all the gardening is “done”.

My ranch in South Texas is run by one amazing lady. Sherry is often my accomplice in various adventures, one of which is armadillo hunting.  Lest I offend anyone who is not familiar with an armadillo, this is no easy task. Though not very smart, bearers of bad eyesight and general malaise, they are still very wily. It is true hunting.

We have tried angling wooden boards from their hole into a trap. Nothing will make you madder than waking up the next morning to the boards all over the yard and everything dug up again.  Poison, plugging up the homes, but… Plan B….. Sherry sets her alarm to 3 in the morning, gets her AR-15 (a lot of gun for an armadillo, but now she is mad) turn on all the lights in the yard and hunt down that little toot. Sherry is of medium stature with long blonde hair, so you need the picture in your mind of her in her nightgown and cowboy boots, toting that big gun.

Gunshots at 3 am are not the norm at my house, but not unusual either. Annie Oakley of course sent that guy to better yards in the great beyond. So when Melissa Shirley’s Armadillo came into the shop that “gotta have it” fever struck again and now he will be the next project, a memorial if you will. Of course full of Texas icons, I am most fascinate with the monarch ( I think I will stitch him first). We will have to make him pop!

Then I think next will be that large mouth bass. Got some ideas…..we’ll see where it leads.

Full of pecans, horny toads, mockingbirds and bluebonnets I am thinking I can get over the armadillo.

So if you want to follow along please get online to pasttimesneedlepoint.com or call 361.572.0088 or just click here. We would love to stitch along with us! (No guns please).