tell me how ya'll trap armored opposums

Blind setting, trail, den setting, funnel set ups.

Buy a 100 foot roll of orange construction fencing...it will be 4 feet wide . Cut it into three strips 16" wide and then cut those strips down to 25' lengths. You will then have 300 feet of material to build your funnels. Use 24" wooden stakes woven thru the mesh to support the funnel. You can utilize this in pretty much all the situation Bob Jameson mentioned.

I use double door 9 x 11 x 24 Comstock cages as the standard....although I have had wonderful success with 9 x 11 x 18 as well. I also have a bunch of scraps of the wire closet shelving material...pieces roughly 18" x 24".....you can place a trap in front of a burrow and block if off with 3 pieces of that and a few stakes in little time at all. If the yard is fenced, find the crawl unders and set traps on them. I prefer to place 2 traps parallel to the fence with the crawl under between the traps...then block the gap between the traps with the wire shelving..Gives you the opportunity for a double..or if the neighbors cat ends up in one you are still in business.

Sometimes if there is a heavy dew in the early morning you can observe their trails and figure out where they are living. Probably on at least 80 % of my jobs I catch at least one the first night. They are as dumb as a bag of hammers.

Use the funnels but think travel routes and choke points. The digging will tell you where they are going and possible direction of travel. Move "upstream" and find natural choke points that funnel them into your sets. If dealing with large properties use your fencing to block off portions to force them into the best areas.

Rabbit fence across yard with cage traps in open parts of fence...find the place they come from

Dillers will sometimes use decks and structures like skunks or whistlepigs. Positive sets work well.

Of course the N.Y. Diller population is still relatively "low," but that is a great tip about looking for the dew trails in the grass early in the morning. We do go to Louisiana to see Judy's family and have caught them, but I never knew to track them in the dew. Will be looking the next time we go for a visit. Thanks Bare Hunter.

So how close to Wisconsin are armadillos? I thought they were a southern animal but a lot of you guys that are familiar with them

don't have much of a southern drawl.

Last I heard they were in southern Illinois....

Thanks, good thing Illinois is a long state. Opossums have adapted to our cold weather too but we can still lose 90% of the

population in a truly cold winter. Of course the survivors take it upon themselves to re-create as fast as they can. What's an

average armadillo litter?

Paul, dillos have quadruplets. Either all male or all female. Just one of those weird wildlife mysteries.

Wow! You can get a college education on this site if you're paying attention. Thanks, Brian.

It is weird, but not so much a mystery. It's called polyembryony. In the armadillo's case, a single fertilized egg splits into four genetically identical embryos. This is the reason a successful litter will contain 4 of the same-sex offspring.

This is about the only thing my biology degree helps me with besides the sales pitch.

Now aren't you all thankful that Vinke and I aren't polyembryony? ( Boy, that's a lot of Ys for one word )

'Tis a good thing identical twins are rare!

Thus every litter of armadillito's consists of identical quadruplets, if all survive pregnancy. Wink, they're getting common on roadsides around here; apparently haven't asked the chicken how to cross the road.
A very curious animal, the diller.