Ancient Armadillo Burial Grounds

If you've read any of my previous blogs, you will know that I have a vivid imagination and sometimes I have the ability to take crazy to a whole new level. Here's my typical "what you need to know first" info: I hate dead things. I don't care what it is, dead things freak me out. Basically, if it's dead, I don't want to ever see it. Open casket funerals are wrong on every level and people need to stop it (that's a blog unto itself).

I'm having some repairs done to the house. I have some dry rot in the paneling and I'm having it replaced. I needed to give the construction workers "wall access" (cut the bushes away from the wall so the workers can get back there). I didn't see the gardener the day he was here so I had to do it myself. I have a brick flower bed in the front of my house and a large trellis with jasmine running up it.

Everything is going along just fine until I get right past the jasmine. As I trim the lantana back, I see something fairly large and a grayish brown (no, not my ex husband John Grey, the color gray...hehehehe I couldn't resist). At first I think it's a rock but I realize that it has a pattern embedded in it. I decide the only thing it can be: an armadillo. Yes, I jump from rock to armadillo in about 3.2 seconds. Another important note: I live in central California. My guess is there is not an armadillo in an 800 mile radius. That doesn't not change a thing for in my mind it is still an armadillo.

I am COMPLETELY freaked out at this point. I decide to test the waters. I rattle the bush in front of the armadillo...and run. I mean, it could be alive and have rabies or rush me and....who knows...but I know it was scary. It doesn't move. Does that change my fear?? Absolutely not! It just means that it is dead, which is almost worst. I mean, a live armadillo will move on...hopefully to my next door neighbors house because I really don't like those people. But a dead armadillo is going no where without some help. And I'm not helping it. That is why God has given me a checkbook...to pay people to remove dead things.

I did a REALLY bad job in a very big hurry around the "dead armadillo". There might have even been a few tears knowing I had to work near a dead armadillo.

Monday morning at 7:30 AM the workers show up at my door. I had worked a 20 hour day on Sunday and I'm awake but in my pajamas and a robe and haven't even brushed my hair. I meet the workers at the door and explain that I have a bit of a problem. I go outside (yes, in my pajamas, robe and disheveled hair) and point to the flower bed.

"There is a dead armadillo in the flower bed and you have to do something about it!" I proclaim.

"Um...ma'am, I think that's a rock" one of them says.

"No, I don't think it's a rock, I think it's an armadillo and I think it's dead."

"Well, I don't think..." in mid-sentence he starts to reach for the rock or armadillo or whatever.

I scream, "NOT WHILE I'M OUTSIDE". Yes, I'm a very rational, sane person.

"Okay, okay," he says in a very 'she should be institutionalized now' sort of way.

I go inside relieved to know that my armadillo drama will soon be taken care of by someone other than myself. I shower, dress and head out to start my day. As I go to the car, the workman stops me.

"I was wrong, it was not a rock."

"Was it an armadillo?" I say in my 'I told you so' voice.

"No, a football," he says as he holds up an old football that had obviously be laying in the bushes for years and years.

I guess we can add 'old footballs that look like a dead armadillos' to the list of things that scare me.