Armadillos pass leprosy to humans, study finds

Armadillos pass leprosy to humans, study finds

Oh My God! As a kid, I used to pride myself in being able to catch Armadillos by hand. It is not all that hard. You have to be quick. You have to be smart. You have to be quiet. And, you have to be able to hold on when you grab them by the tail. I do not know when I caught my first Armadillo. I chased it down and grabbed it by the tail and flipped it over in my hand and it calmed down. You can scratch their bellies and they seem to like that....I think. Anyway, this study is not new. I have known about the Leprosy connection for years. Everybody in Texas knew this to be a fact. Heck, I used to laugh that I might get Leprosy after all the Armadillos I have caught over the years. Armadillos were not the only thing I caught. I remember once catching a Turkey.

Beautiful little Gobbler

 Now, what the heck do you do with a live Turkey you have tucked under your arm? Well, I drove to the local hangout known as the Dairy Cue and had a coke with this wild Turkey sitting in the seat of my pickup truck next to me. You had to watch out for the pecks and the wing flapping. When I arrived home with the bird, my Mother went wild and told me to let "that thing" go. I did. It headed out over our back fence and high tailed it for the country. I do not hurt animals. I do not hunt. I do not fish. I prefer to see animals in the wilds, alive. The last thing I caught was a House Finch which had got into the Pottery workshop in Moulton. I tried my best to shoo it out but it would not cooperate. So, I waited till it got dark and crawled up on a ladder and grabbed it by hand and took it outside and let it go. I tell this story because just this morning, Angela sent me a picture of a Hummingbird she caught and rescued the same way. Birds like to fly into the workshop and then they seem to forget how to fly out again. We may become more like the Wild Kingdom than Studio 719, down there in the country. Well, that is the way things are these days. Now where are those new pair of tennis shoes? I think I remember that there were some Armadillos in the backyard down there the last time I was down.......

Angela's rescued Hummingbird