Armadillos marching north to Illinois

An armadillo is photographed looking for food at the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida on April 15, 2003. Illinois officials report that armadillos have been killed on the road just about every year since 2003, reflecting what wildlife specialists say is ample evidence that the creatures with the pencil-thin tail are nudging their way northward from their southern U.S. climes. (AP Photo/Illinois Natural History Survey Mammal Collection, Michael Jeffords)

For years, Lloyd Nelson laughed off as myth reports that armadillos — those armored, football-sized critters with the big claws and bigger nose — had waddled their way into southern Illinois, the same place folks say they've seen cougars.

Folks weren't fibbing about the mountain lions. Nelson knows now they weren't joshing about armadillos, either.

Since his run-in with an armadillo that was turning a woman's flower bed into a crater near here three years ago, the Jackson County animal-control chief says he's logged in this county alone 13 sightings of the stubby-legged kin to sloths and anteaters. Most were dead as doornails along roads — the leathery animals with poor vision are no match against highway traffic.