Armadillos have arrived in downstate Illinois and are heading north
CHICAGO — Every now and then the Illinois Department of Natural Resources puts out a public request for sightings of armadillos, anywhere in the state: Folks, if you see something, say something. And periodically, yes, they do get a handful of reports of armadillos, scattered here and there. But when they asked again in February, they received more than 400 reports in 24 hours, from across the state, though (mostly) southern counties. Illinois, you’re seeing armadillos beneath your sheds. You’re seeing armadillos in your gardens. You’re even seeing them waddling across your lawns in the dying light of winter afternoons. You’re seeing them on warm summer nights and, increasingly, on cooler spring days.
Last summer, one was found (dead) behind a Kia dealership in Springfield.
Jeff Holshouser, who lives just south of Carbondale, found five recently in his yard. “I eradicated them,” he said. Meaning? “Meaning, I removed them unwillingly, without offering a chance of continued life support. You’ve got to — they’re getting thick down here.”
In many cases, the response to a live armadillo in Illinois has been confusion — just what in the long-snouted, armored-shelled hell am I looking at here? In the central Illinois town of Pekin, not far from Peoria, a schoolteacher named Mindy Wendling caught one in her flower pots.
“My daughter says there’s something in the window well. Whatever it was, it was hard to see. It was throwing rocks and dirt at the window as it dug, so much that we had to climb on a step stool to look down. And it’s pouring rain out. My daughter says, ‘It’s an armadillo.’ My husband and I are like, ‘OK, sure. Illinois is not Texas.’ But she’s like, ‘No, really.’ And the next night, it’s back and it is throwing so much mud at the windows. So I shined a light on it, and this thing, it jumps straight up into the air. I called the DNR. They asked me if they could trap it and I said, ‘Whatever you want — but wait, why do I have an armadillo in my window?’
“It’s like a tiny prehistoric creature,, that’s out of place.”
