Armadillos have been digging holes all over my yard for a while now. I can tell it's armadillos because of the shape of the hole. We had moles a couple of years ago, they don't dig holes, they burrow. The wiener divas flushed them out and killed them. So I was pretty darn sure it was armadillos. But since they're nocturnal I never actually saw one of the dirty little bastards in my yard.
Then the other night, the wiener divas started barking by the back door to let me know they needed to go outside for a late night pee. So I stood on the patio while the girls did their business like I always do. Then all of a sudden it was like a wiener dog melee. Barking, and growling, and jumping around, probably waking every neighbor in earshot. Definitely waking all the dogs in the neighborhood, and of course they all joined in.
Hoping to shut those dogs up before any neighbors had a chance to complain, I ran out in the yard in my bear feet and PJs to see exactly what was causing all the ruckus. And there he was. My arch nemesis, the armadillo! Just sitting there pretty as you please, scaring the hell out of my precious wiener divas, like he was King Shit of Turd Mountain. Well you know I could not stand for that.
How's a wiener dog supposed to take on an armadillo? Even 3 to one it's still not a fair fight. After all, what is an armadillo but a wiener dog...WITH ARMOR!! So I grabbed the nearest weapon at hand-- a garden rake--and proceeded to protect my precious wieners with blatant disregard for my own safety.
I won't say I saw fear in his beady little eyes. It was so dark I could hardly see anything. But I raised that rake like it was some weapon of medieval torture, summoned up all the warrior princess power inside me, and smote the beast with every ounce of strength in my very un-Xena-like body.
Instead of wails of agony I expected to hear, all I heard was THUNK. The little bastard had rolled up into his shell! My vicious death blow thwarted by this freak of nature, this possum on a half-shell.
"Dammit! You! Little! Shit! Die! Damn you! Die!" I yelled punctuating every word with a swing of the garden rake, each hit inevitably ending with "THUNK" And not even a crack to show for my hard work.
So there I am at 1:30 in the morning, in my PJs surrounded by wildly barking dogs, madder than a bulldog chewing on a bumble bee, just blindly beating the hell out of an armadillo. In hindsight its really no wonder my neighbors think I'm crazy. I surely earned the title that night.
After a moment I did manage to calm myself, and the divas, down. But that armadillo was no fool. He stayed right there safely enclosed in his shell, probably laughing his little armadillo ass off at me.
"Well, I'll show you!" I thought, " you want to live in that shell, well you can just die in that shell,too!"
So I started using the rake golf-club-style, knocking the foul beast, bit by bit, towards the pond. If I hadn't been fueled by adrenaline and armadillo-induced rage, I probably would have noticed that the ground was getting more and more squooshy the nearer I got to the pond.
I finally got close enough to the pond to know that one more good whack would mean a watery grave for my adversary. I didn't hesitate. I swung back the rake in my best imitation of Tiger Woods. And with a rebel yell, the likes of which, have probably not been heard since Custer's Last Stand, I swung that rake with all my might. SWACK! It was the sound I imagine Babe Ruth heard every time he hit one into the stands. Sadly my elation was short-lived.
Id swung the rake so hard I'd swung myself right into the pond. Lucky for me, (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) I did not end up in a watery grave. Instead, I ended up covered head to toe, in muddy, gross, disgusting, pond sludge! Good thing I still had that rake in my hand because I had to use it to pull myself outta there.What a mess! I really do hope my neighbors slept through the whole armadillo incident. What in the world would I tell them? I was rehearsing for Swamp Thing-The Musical!?
So far none of my neighbors have mentioned anything about it. But when they see me, they do notice an extra gleam in my eye, the gleam that comes from knowing I made the world a safer place for wiener dogs.
