We began experiencing the Great Armadillo Invasion on our property in 2018. Before then, I’d seen a few squashed on the back roads leading to our property. But then we noticed trenches dug into our grass each morning. Armadillos feed at night, burrowing through the soil to find grubs and insects. They wreak havoc on golf courses, and they were doing the same to the yard. I live on 32 acres, and all but six are wooded. Around the house, we painstakingly planted Zosia grass. Apparently, that’s Michelin Star quality armadillo dining.
So, we developed a plan to dispatch of them. I won’t tell you what “dispatching” means, but no dispatching happens unless you can catch them in the act. That’s where it got tricky. At first, we went into the woods blindly. That stopped when I walked into a nest of chiggers and had running, itching sores on my legs for the next month. It was so bad that I was tempted to run my belt sander across my thighs to relieve the itch. That took me out of the armadillo wars for good. But Barb would not be defeated.
She spent a small fortune on sensors, motion detector lights, and a high-powered head lamp. Now, we were notified by calls of “Back Yard” or “Front Door” which sent her scurrying out against the invaders. That did the trick. On her best summer, Barb dispatched of 21 armadillos.
But this year, the armadillos have adapted. They feed near the edges of the grass, near the woods. When Rambo runs out there, headlamp blazing, they simply scurry off into the woods and she comes back in all pissed off. Dispatchment count so far this year is a paltry three. Looks like the tide of the war has turned in Vanleer, TN.
In the late 1800s, naval scholar Alfred Thayer Mahan made the case that the way to control the world was by controlling shipping lanes. This meant having the ability to sail across the oceans to engage the enemy and blockade their harbors. The weapon of choice was the battleship. These steam powered beasts were the modern-day versions of the wooden ships that would blast each other with cannons, side-by-side, at close range. With the battleship, that distance could now be much longer, and far more lethal.
The Navy bought it. And the battleships. Meanwhile, other nations were doing the same. Japan however had a vision for supplementing battleships with aircraft. Although we had a few aircraft carriers, Japan developed a bunch. And they trained their pilots how to fly and fight off them.
When the attack on Pearl Harbor destroyed most of our battleships, it was devastating. Fortunately, our few aircraft carriers were not in port. By June, we had defeated the Japanese at the Battle of Midway, sinking four of their best carriers. This being only the second time in history that a naval battle was won without enemy ships seeing each other. The battleship was useless here. The war would continue, but soon we had more aircraft carriers than could be imagined. Everyone agreed the aircraft carrier was the superior weapon.
But like armadillos, bad guys adapt to battle plans. Today, our battleships are scrap metal, artificial reefs, or museums and our carriers are the pride of the fleet. Which, as we have seen in the Red Sea, makes them really big targets for simple weapons used by Houthi rebels. Remember, David knocked off a giant by hitting him in the head with a rock. It seems all of us make future choices based on past events.
Sometimes I feel like I’m one step behind. Things change faster than I can adapt. Have you experienced this?
I’m realizing though that focusing on the past is useful when you begin seeing the cyclical pattern of things.
A few months ago, I stopped in Easton, MD to visit my daughter, son-in-law, and five wonderful grandkids. I spent about an hour pushing them on the swings and playing hide-and-seek and then my daughter told the kids to let Grandpa Mack rest. I never thought I’d ever hear those last four words, but there they were.
We sat outside in the cool, Spring sunshine watching the kids play and I noticed my son-in-law was noticeably uncomfortable. He began talking about recent news events.
“How can you not be absolutely terrified when you see how bad things are in this country right now?” He asked me. “I’m so worried about the future.”
I understood his question. It’s one I’m sure we all wrestle with. It’s the uncertainty. The worry that something bad will happen that will be worse than the last bad thing that’s happened.
But that’s what’s so comforting about it. That pattern is predictable.
So, I told them about life in early 1991 when my daughter, his wife, was three. We were gearing up for Operation Desert Storm. Even though I was on shore duty, we were fair game for deployment to the Gulf. Victory was not a certainty. Our military was bloated thanks to the buildup of the 1980s, but it was not combat tested. I saw lots of apathy. I thought we were going to lose this battle, and who knows what else. I was afraid to go to war and leave my two young children. Then I was put on a platform to deploy to the USS Iwo Jima to work on the surgical team since I was O.R. trained. We would be operating on critically wounded marines. At that moment, I thought things couldn’t get any worse.
But the “mother of all battles” turned into the “mother of all ass whippings”, and I never deployed. That fear went away, only to be replaced by the Y2K panic nine years later, and 9/11 eleven years after that, and the Great Recession seven years later, followed by COVID in 2020.
In each case we found ourselves unprepared, struggling to survive, gaining some ground, and eventually overcoming. Then we take those lessons learned and apply them to ensure THIS event never happen again.
And then we forget about looking forward to the next potential challenge and we’ll go through the same process again. All the while thinking that things could not possibly be worse than they are right now.
So, while that didn’t do much to quell my son-in-law’s anxiety, I think he finally understood that it’s part of the real circle of life. And we should prepare for the NEXT crisis, realizing that although it will be different, it will have its roots in this and previous challenges. And know that even though it’s bad and seems like it can’t get any worse, it tends to somehow turn out ok.
Which brings us back to the Armadillo Wars. I’m sure Barb’s plan is to now rig some traps in the woods and then just chase the armadillos into the traps. Which will make them build a strategic alliance with the squirrels to raid our home when Barb races out to chase them into the woods. The armadillos fight back! Then they’ll start a propaganda war to try to get me to have Barb stand down, my rural conscientious objector status obviously betraying me. They’ll enlist the help of my cats, who they know I can’t say no to.
Eventually we build a truce with the armadillos. If I agree to give them the entire pasture on the hill, they agree to leave my Zoysia alone. One day in the near future, we’ll probably build a strategic alliance with the armadillos and squirrels to protect the property from wolves, or bears. The cycle continues even though the players might change.
In a weird way, there is some comfort in that. Do you feel it?