Rome man finds armadillo along old Highway 34

Last Wednesday, Mike “Squid” Taylor made a unique find while driving along old Highway 34 near his hometown of Rome.

What he found was an armadillo – an animal not typically seen in Iowa – lying dead in the road.

“It was right there at the sand pits on Old 34,” Taylor said. “I thought maybe they were moving here, and some of them had moved to the sand pits where they could burrow around in there.”

Taylor loaded the armadillo into the bed of his truck and began telling people what he had found.

“I showed it to a lot of people,” he said. “I had a lot of people taking pictures of it.”

The consensus among the people he talked to was that the creature had probably traveled to Iowa on some sort of vehicle.

“Everyone told me it probably just dropped off a truck,” Taylor said.

Andy Robbins, a wildlife biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, said that armadillos are rare in Iowa.

“We don’t have an existing population (of armadillos) in Iowa,” Robbins said. “The closest is in southern Missouri.”

He said that there is no natural explanation how the occasional armadillo finds its way to Iowa.

“They are transported up here one way or another,” Robbins said. “Strays are getting up here in some manner. It’s a mystery how they turn up.”

He added that people should not expect any armadillo populations to spring up in Iowa.

“They can’t survive this far north,” Robbins explained. “They don’t hibernate, and they wouldn’t have any way of finding food in the winter time.”