Ask Burton!

This week, what to do about a common animal pest, when it decides your flowerbeds are a fantastic playground.

Q: What happened to my newly planted flowerbed!? 

A: This is the fault of one of our state animals here in Texas – the armadillo.

Armadillos primarily feed on insects, as well as the odd fruit or nutritious root or tuber they come across. And your flowerbed, rich in composted matter, is a fine place to find earthworms, grubs, and any number of common insects found in soil. The armadillos aren’t trying to destroy your flowerbeds, exactly… It’s just that there are these inconvenient plants on top of their lunch!

There are several avenues of control, no one of which is perfect, but one or more together will help.

• Live traps: Animal traps are available for sale at outdoor stores that sell hunting supplies, and if you can locate the animal’s burrows, a trap baited with ripe (or even better, over-ripe) fruit nearby will often catch the critters. Place 1″x12″ boards in an open ‘V’ shape to funnel the animals toward the trap opening. Armadillos don’t see well and will often trundle on in after the smell of the fruit and the likely insects such fruit will attract. City animal controls will usually be willing to rent these traps to city residents and take such trapped animals away to find them somewhere else to live. If you can’t locate the burrows, place such traps near the areas the animals are digging. Check said traps daily if set; trapping a critter to have it removed is fine, but leaving an animal trapped for days is not.
• Repellent sprays: Castor oil based armadillo repellents sprayed across a bed will discourage the animals from foraging. Again, not perfectly effective, but they do help.
• General purpose insect killer granules: If you use a general purpose insecticide across the bed to kill most of the insects the animals are digging for, you’ll leave them nothing to eat, and they’ll eventually go somewhere else. It’s likely your digging damage will actually increase temporarily while the armadillos look for where the tasty morsels went, but they’ll get the idea in time and go elsewhere.

Additionally, if you’re in a rural area, the animals are active after twilight and can be hunted if your local laws and ordinances allow. But finding the critters involves a lot of staying up well after dark – and IF you can see them – and so it’s rarely practical.