Fooled, Wascally wabbits, armadillo

I’m sure everyone enjoyed my April Fool’s joke.

Our back yard is overrun with rabbits.  The only thing is you hardly ever see them.  The rabbits apparently are very nocturnal.  During the day we think they hang out in a rabbit hole under our shed. You would think that having rabbits wouldn’t be a big deal.  Well it looks like we have hundreds of rabbits roaming the back yard at night based on the amount of rabbit shit that covers our yard.  It is insane.  You literally can not take a single step without seeing round rabbit turds on the ground. 

Still you wouldn’t thing it is that big of a deal I guess, free fertilizer for the yard right?   I guess except that sometimes dogs think that rabbit shit is instead little nuggets of dog food dropped from heaven.  In the past we have caught Nicki eating rabbit shit and we think that Sadie has picked up on the disgusting habit as well.  Ali and I would be much happier if the rabbits found another home. We are hoping during wet season when that area gets flooded they will have to relocate.  When they do I can try to put some sort of small wire fencing under the shed to keep them out. 

The dogs do their part to try to keep our yard rabbit free. Every night when we take the dogs out they are desperately looking for any motion that could be a rabbit.  If they see the slightest twitch they are off like rockets trying to flush it out.  The rabbits are way too fast, even too fast for Sadie and always get away.  They are able to get through the fencing as well.  We had hoped the small openings in the fence would have kept the rabbits out.

This morning before work I thought the dogs had flushed another rabbit.  They were carrying on by the fence line.  I walked over and saw something that looked to be about the size of a large rabbit but it wasn’t moving very fast at all.   I was worried the dogs were going to try to hurt it so I ran over and called them off.  As I got closer I realized it wasn’t a rabbit but instead a full size armadillo.

The armadillo was scurrying up and down the fence line desperately trying to escape the two barking dogs.  A couple times he jumped into the fence looking for a hole.  As he tried to escape he was making a menacing hissing sound.  The dogs chased it under a palmetto bush where the armadillo started to dig in to protect itself.  All you saw was clumps of sand flying out as he tried to burrow in deeper.

I called Ali out to see our latest visitor.  I had her take the dogs in so I could try to get him out of the yard.  I came over with a shovel and net.  I tried to get the shovel under him so he would back out.  Instead he dug in deeper and hammered the shovel with his back feet violently.  I certainly wasn’t dressed for an extensive extraction procedure and I was running late so I had to leave him be.  Luckily Ali said she saw the armadillo get out under the front gate a little later.