This story was originally published in The Guardian.
In the dark, the man with the rifle, was able to level it at the object. He thinks that it looks like one. It is a fuse box. Another candidate tried to shoot with the gun, but it turned out to be a rock.
In this town besieged by armadillos, anything with a resemblance to the armored nemesis is under suspicion.
A man with a beard and a sonorous voice, who has never seen an armadillo before, killed 15 of them last year in western North Carolina. He has dispatched eight animals in the last two weeks.
Homeowners were so perturbed by the arrival of mammals that they gave Bullard $100 for every dead carcass he produced. Dozens of people in and around Sapphire, North Carolina now have Bullard on retainer, allowing him to prowl around their properties at night, armed, in the hope of shooting the culprits.
The task was learned quickly. The standard rifles that were used on the first armadillos didn't seem to kill them completely. One of the creatures jumped in the air, leaving a bewildered Bullard flailing. At night, the armadillos give off a gray color that is absorbed by their bodies and not reflected in their eyes.
Bullard said that it was like hunting aliens. We don't know anything about them. We can't seem to kill them. They show up unexpectedly. Their numbers have exploded.
It was initially incongruous to spot the animals in North Carolina. The mammal has been Texas' state mammal for more than two decades and used to live in the flat state. They are often seen as roadkill in small-scale racing events where they are made to run down a 40-foot track.
In the US, the meat of the amadre is called "poor man's pork" in Depression-era Texas and has been linked to the disease.
It is 800 miles away from the Blue Ridge Mountains. It is part of a scenic area that gets so much precipitation that it has developed a rainforest with mosses and fir and spruce trees. The area is a riot of red and orange in autumn. There is a small ski resort in the area.
The first armadillo was spotted here in 2019. He said he didn't believe it. I thought the woman had a drinking problem. Within a year, Bullard was spending his nights at the local golf course, speeding from hole to hole on a golf cart, killing the armadillos on the greens like a sort of cross between Tiger Woods and Davy Crockett.
