| They tawk lahk Texuns. |
| Let 'em try to take Chicago. We got poo-lice officers with baby blue helmets and night sticks ... |
Folks weren't fibbing about the mountain lions. Nelson knows now they weren't joshing about armadillos, either.
Since his run-in with an armadillo that was turning a woman's flower bed into a crater near here three years ago, the Jackson County animal-control chief says he's logged in this county alone 13 sightings of the stubby-legged kin to sloths and anteaters. Most were dead as doornails along roads -- the leathery animals with poor vision are no match against highway traffic.
"We've had armadillos killed on the road just about every year" since 2003, says Nelson, reflecting what wildlife specialists say is ample evidence that the creatures with the pencil-thin tail are nudging their way northward from their southern U.S. climes.
"We've got them in Nebraska; that's as far north as we have any records," said Lynn Robbins, a biology professor at Missouri State University. "They're adapting, filling in so many places."