{"id":48588,"date":"2021-07-14T15:28:02","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T15:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=48588"},"modified":"2021-07-14T15:28:02","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T15:28:02","slug":"seen-a-live-armadillo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=48588","title":{"rendered":"Seen: a live armadillo!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By John Kanelis \/ johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

MARTIN DIES JR. STATE PARK, Texas<\/strong> — You know the saying about there being “a first time for everything.”<\/p>\n

This particular “first time” took many decades to present itself.<\/p>\n

My wife and I saw a live armadillo<\/em> scampering along a park road in this lovely state park deep in the Pineywoods of East Texas.<\/p>\n

You see, we moved to Texas in 1984. That was — gulp! — 37 years ago<\/em>. The armadillos I had ever seen — until we got here — were those that had been, um, reduced to road kill along our many thousands of miles of highways and bi-ways.<\/p>\n

I once wrote a column for the Beaumont Enterprise — where I worked for nearly 11 years after arriving in Texas — about my frustration in never seeing a live armadillo. The only such critters I had seen had been of the type I described a few seconds ago.<\/p>\n

We moved to Amarillo in 1995 and I was utterly certain we would see them a-plenty along the arid Caprock. Hah! Fat chance!<\/em> Indeed, I noticed far fewer armadillo carcasses than we had seen along the Gulf Coast.<\/p>\n

Over many years we have traveled the length and breadth of this vast state. Live armadillo sighting? Not a chance.<\/p>\n

Until we ventured to Martin Dies Jr. SP.<\/p>\n

My hope now for the little critter is that he\/she stays the heck out of the way of oncoming traffic.<\/p>\n\n

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By John Kanelis \/ johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com MARTIN DIES JR. STATE PARK, Texas — You know the saying about there being “a first time for everything.” This particular “first time” took many decades to present itself. My wife and I saw a live armadillo scampering along a park road in this lovely state park deep in the … Continue reading Seen: a live armadillo!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[568,2022,9739,9740],"class_list":["post-48588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-beaumont-enterprise","tag-gulf-coast","tag-pineywoods","tag-texas-caprock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48590,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48588\/revisions\/48590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}