I was considerably interested in the recent article (Aug. 20) by Mike Belt and Alicia Henrikson in the Journal-World about armadillos and their invasion of Kansas. Fifty-seven years ago I was living in Leesville, La., employed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and part of my official duties consisted of studying armadillos.

• Armored invasion inching our way (08-20-05)

Lacking an insulating fur coat, armadillos are extremely sensitive to cold. The winter of 1947-48 was a severe one, with temperatures on the Gulf Coast only a few degrees above zero Fahrenheit. I witnessed a massive die-off of the animals on the Gulf Coast, and am sure that it was even more severe in recently invaded areas farther to the north.

Working in the woods I carried a loaded .22 pistol, and whenever there was opportunity, I shot an armadillo and saved its stomach contents for analysis, motivated by the concern of some sportsmen that armadillos would reduce quail populations by nest predation. I prided myself for marksmanship, and by June 30, 1948, when I left for Kansas, I had collected 104 stomachs.

In 1952, I published a paper in the Journal of Mammalogy (vol. 33, no. 1) entitled: “The Armadillo in the Southeastern United States,” with co-authors Phil Goodrum and Coleman Newman. Their contributions pertained to the animal’s spread in Florida. Some pertinent quotes from this 1952 paper follow: “Further aid to the natural range extension have been provided by humans transporting them into areas where they did not occur naturally. … this has (probably) occurred hundreds of times, and in some instances has resulted in the establishment of permanent colonies. A traveler, curious on first encounter, carries home one or more, confined perhaps beneath a barrel or tub, or in a wire enclosure. The animal would escape by digging and return to the wild. A minimum of a pair or a gravid female would have to be introduced for a new colony to survive, and the first litter would have to be all males.” After maturity one of the litter would have to mate with its own mother and produce a litter of females for the inbred colony to persist.”

Quoting further: “Kansas. – Hibbard (1944:57) records the circumstances under which armadillos were taken 4 1/2 mi. N.W. Caldwell, Sumner County, and near Strong, Chase County, Kansas … Lutz (1950) records two others recently taken 10 mi. N. Pratt, Pratt County, and N.W. Hugoton, and still other specimens are in the south-central part of the state. Missouri. – the Missouri Conservationist for May 1947 (p. 12) carried an account of an armadillo bayed by dogs and killed by a farmer in a pasture at Bramington in Henry County, near Clinton, in the east-central part.”

– Henry S. Fitch, a retired Kansas University professor, was featured in an Aug. 7 Journal-World article about his snake research.