Armadillos are tropical mammals (that's right, mammals!), but they've been in southern Missouri for several years, working their way up Interstate 44. Three years ago I saw an armadillo on Highway FF. Told the feed-store owner's son, and he said he'd seen one in the area also, but nobody had believed him. Finally, today, one turns up as road kill right where Highway FF meets F. I apologize for such a sad photo. It's just proof that armadillos do come right up to the northern edge of their range when they want something. (This is latitude 38 degrees 25 minutes North.) This one might well have been drinking from the creek. They need a lot of water. My 1946 Webster's unabridged dictionary states flatly, "Their flesh is good food."
To protect themselves, armadillos will roll up into an ball. But when startled by oncoming cars, they jump -- vertically -- which is almost always fatal. This one had a laceration along its back and down the side. Close-up, it's an almost Martian creature: blend of pig, tank and turtle, with an opossum's face and a rat's tail. But unfortunately, it's very slow.
It's Railroad Days in Pacific, and special guest Union Pacific Railroad locomotive Challenger No. 3985, the only operating engine of its class in the world, made a whistle stop this morning for about 2,000 train fans who took photos of this huge mechanical marvel built in 1943, retired in 1962, and restored in 1981. The engine alone weighs 627,900 pounds. It runs on No. 5 heating oil.
This 12-inch-gauge steam railway gives half-hour, two-mile rides through the woods along the Meramec River, on Sundays May through October from 11 to 4. Pictured is just one of the several steam locomotives of the all-volunteer "Wabash Frisco & Pacific Railroad." Has a roundhouse, switches, a real railroad bridge, water tank, delights everybody including me who finally went for the first time today. There was a single seat left on the first train; as the rare single at this big-butt family thing, I got it. Have always adored trains and it used to be my preferred method of travel. (Grew up next to a railroad spur. I remember the manual seesaw handcars, remember seeing a worker who was fleetingly in my sight at dusk, oh, about 45 years ago.) The train's departure point is the vanished town of Glencoe; it travels also through the the sites of the lost Missouri towns of Bluffs, Mohan, and Yeatman.
Armadillos are tropical mammals (that's right, mammals!), but they've been in southern Missouri for several years, working their way up Interstate 44. Three years ago I saw an armadillo on Highway FF. Told the feed-store owner's son, and he said he'd seen one in the area also, but nobody had believed him. Finally, today, one turns up as road kill right where Highway FF meets F. I apologize for such a sad photo. It's just proof that armadillos do come right up to the northern edge of their range when they want something. (This is latitude 38 degrees 25 minutes North.) This one might well have been drinking from the creek. They need a lot of water. My 1946 Webster's unabridged dictionary states flatly, "Their flesh is good food."
