Friday, May 16, 2008 5:51 PM CDT
Exotic armadillos are becoming a more common sight in Illinois
NEW ATHENS (AP) — A trip into the woods to hunt for shed antlers produced much more than a trophy rack for Bob Rutkowski.
Hiking in the Kaskaskia River Fish and Wildlife Area just south of New Athens in southern St. Clair County back in March, Rutkowski saw something dart in front of him but didn’t get a good look at the critter.
Seconds later, his black Labrador retriever, Nesene, was on the trail of an armadillo, a once rare mammal in Illinois that has been showing up more and more frequently in the southwestern part of the state in recent years.
“I spend probably 150 days a year outside in the woods and I’ve never seen one,” said Rutkowski, a New Athens native who turns 36 on Friday. “A lot of people are like ‘What?’ when you tell them the story and they look at you funny. A lot of people don’t even know that they are here.
“When that dog took off after it, it took a minute to actually register what I saw. I was like ‘That was an armadillo! I can’t believe it!’”
Rutkowski’s lab chased the armadillo into a hollow log, where it hid from the barking canine. Rutkowski, who always carries a digital camera on his hikes to take photographs for his Web site, www.siloutdoors.com, stuck his camera into an opening in the log and began randomly snapping pictures.
Little did Rutkowski know at the time how rare it was to get an actual photograph of an armadillo in Illinois.
“To get a picture is very exciting,” said Dr. Joyce Hofmann, a senior research scientist/mammalogist with the Illinois Natural History Survey. “Most of the reports we get are of road kill.
“I love it when people actually see a live one. To get a photograph is even better.”
Hofmann, who is the curator for the Illinois Natural History Survey Mammal Collection in Champaign, has been recording all armadillo sightings in Illinois since 1999, plotting them on a map and recording them in a database. She plans on writing a scientific manuscript about the steady northern migration of armadillos into Illinois.
According to Hofmann, armadillos — which are abundant in southern Missouri and many southern states — began showing up in southern Illinois in the late 1970s, but very infrequently.
Since 1999 when she began keeping records, Hofmann has recorded 130 sightings of armadillos in Illinois. The bulk have come from 22 counties in southwestern Illinois, bracketed by Interstate 70 to the north and Interstate 57 to the east.
“It just seems like since 1999, they’ve been spotted in a lot of places,” Hofmann said. “It’s becoming less unusual all the time. Ten years ago, I would have said it was real unusual. Now, it’s not quite so unusual anymore.
“The thing we don’t exactly know is how they are getting here,” Hofmann said. “They can swim, but the Mississippi is a pretty big river to cross.”
Hofmann has several theories. One is they are being brought into the state as a prank. Another is people want to keep them as a pet, change their mind and let them go.
“There’s so many now, it’s hard to believe they are all prank armadillos,” she said. “They walk along highways, so maybe they walk along bridges across the river. Maybe they swim to one island and after a while, swim to another.”
A tropical species native to South America, armadillos generally live in warm habitats such as rain forests and grasslands. That’s why Hofmann is surprised to hear of a sighting, such as Rutkowski’s, so early in the year.
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