By Bob Chauvin

FINDING A TITLE FOR THIS PIECE WAS EASY.

 I really did hate making skin mounts on the hard-shelled beasts.
Why?--I thought you'd never ask!

For those readers that have worked on armadillos, I am not telling tales out of school here. Most specimens that arrive on a taxidermist's workbench are there as a result of encounters with cars and trucks. Drive along almost any semi-rural road in the southern Gulf States and plenty of "road pizza dillos" will be found. Their success rate at crossing roads is not so good. In fact, I now know the answer to the age old question, "Why the chicken crossed the road?" He did it to show armadillos it can be done!

 For those who have handled the mostly nocturnal Dasypodidae (nine banded armadillo), what follows should be all too familiar. This critter is hardly pleasant to work on. Even the freshest one smells bad once opened up for skinning. The job is messy no matter how they're handled. The armor-encapsulated tail is a nightmare to clean and the ears are next to impossible to turn. So, what's not to like about that? everything, including the fact that this animal is also said to carry a form of Hansen's disease--leprosy!) Armadillos are routinely used in research projects involving that malady.
The Spanish conquistadors aptly named it "little man in armor," properly pronounced ar-ma-dee-yo. Because they are so well armored, the skinning process .....