DALLAS (Reuters) - An East Texas man was wounded after he fired a gun at an armadillo in his yard and the bullet ricocheted back to hit him in his face, the county sheriff said on Friday.

Cass County Sheriff Larry Rowe said the man, who was not identified, went outside his home in Marietta, southwest of Texarkana, at around 3 a.m. on Thursday morning. He spotted the armadillo on his property and opened fire.

"His wife was in the house. He went outside and took his .38 revolver and shot three times at the armadillo," Rowe said.

The animal's hard shell deflected at least one of three bullets, which then struck the man's jaw, he said.

The man was airlifted to a nearby hospital, where his jaw was wired shut, according to Rowe.

The status of the animal is unknown.

"We didn't find the armadillo," the sheriff said.

(Editing by Jon Herskovitz and Sandra Maler)

http://news.yahoo.com/texas-man-shoots-armadillo-gets-hit-face-bullet-214656503.html



..so first I laughed,, but then I thought bout it and maybe this is not one of those stories that should be believed just because someone said it true

my main questions

1. Are armadillos bullet proof?
2. If bullets cant penetrate them, how DO they manage to be killed(other than roadkill)?
3. Is this possibly a BS story made up to cover that his wife shot him?


,,,things that make me go,,,hmmmmmm

.38 isn't real powerful, i have seen .22's bounce off, but i didn't know a .38 could...

1. Are armadillos bullet proof?
2. If bullets cant penetrate them, how DO they manage to be killed(other than roadkill)?
3. Is this possibly a BS story made up to cover that his wife shot him?
4. Is this a thread that Americans should not have guns, & to ban the 2nd amendment ?
5. Is this about cruelty to animals?



,,,things that make me go,,,hmmmmmm

its a story about a man getting shot while trying to shoot an armadillo,,

really, nothing political here,,,,its more in that 'current events' category

i have seen 22's bounce off glass before
heard 38's dont have much more power , but never really played with one

and no everything on the net is real : )
Santa Clause told me so

and that was my first thought was wife shot him and they said well it was a armadillo

first it was Cows With Guns!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI

Now it's Armadillos with Guns!

What is this World coming to?

Armadillos are not bulletproof. This story does not pass the smell test. A bullet on an angle could be deflected but the shell is not that strong.

Many armadillos carry leprosy so they shouldn't be "messed with".

Ill go with #3

i've seen .22's bounce off them, metal... not saying they are bulletproof, but i know what i saw...

My sister lives next door to what used to be the armadillo leprosy research station in Texas. It was run by her neighbor and friend, Jalapeno Sam, now deceased. She took some trips with Sam to promote armadillos and jalapeno candy.

Here is his story ...

Samuel Thomas Howze "Jalapeno/Armadillo Sam" Lewis, the Texas-sized promoter who created jalapeno-flavored peanut brittle and bred armadillos for racing and facing off movie stars like Kevin Costner in "Tin Cup," has died. He was 80.

Lewis died of cancer Jan. 10 at his home in San Angelo, Texas.

Mississippi-born but Texan from the tip of his boots to the top of his Stetson, Lewis liked jalapeno peppers, but he liked armadillos first and probably better.

He was still a kid when he originally encountered one of the nocturnal burrowing mammals with the bony plated skin and grandly told "Uncle Slug," his seen-it-all relative, "We have a prehistoric animal on our hands."

From that time on, Lewis always had at least one or two armadillos around his house, though he conceded, "They don't respond very well to humans. They pretty much have a mind of their own." The only armadillo-free years were those he spent as a B-29 tail gunner during World War II.

Lewis helped operate a bakery and managed a pizza place before he finally figured out how to make a living with his favorite things -- jalapenos and armadillos.

He added the peppers to lollipops, peanut and pecan brittle, jelly, guacamole, salsa, relish, olives, ketchup and mustard. Never lacking boldness, Lewis asked the giant Texas-based UniMark Foods Inc. to help distribute his concoctions.

Instead, UniMark bought the Jalapeno Sam company and the rights to his products, then hired Jalapeno Sam. Lewis regularly crisscrossed Texas and the U.S., with a couple of armadillos to accompany him, touting jalapeno foods and giving away samples at discount and grocery stores.

He always drove, he said, because armadillos don't like flying.

They apparently don't like much else either, but Lewis became their champion anyway. After all, he began making money -- through bets, at least -- with armadillos a long time before he started selling jalapeno-laced candy.

He first raced an armadillo in 1951, against a horned toad. Nobody could remember which animal won. Then he paired one against a duck, and the armadillo lost badly.

Before too long, he settled on armadillo against armadillo, with the human tenders following behind along a six-foot by 24-foot course. Rules precluded physical contact, but the humans were allowed to encourage the armadillos verbally or by blowing on the hair on the backs of their legs.

Lewis, who staged races at 40 or 50 fairs and other events annually and even in Las Vegas, set up one for the Tracy Dry Bean Festival in California's Central Valley in 1990.

"The people in Tracy wanted something to liven up their festival, and they called me," Lewis told the Modesto Bee at the time, although he added that armadillos would rather eat insects and lizards than beans.

Armadillo Sam, who proudly asserted he had "known 'em and loved 'em since 1937," became an expert on the armadillo and shared his knowledge with such writers as James Michener, author of the epic historic novel "Texas."

Lewis caught them in the wild and shipped them to zoos, rented them to movie and television producers and such rock groups as the Rolling Stones, and provided them to scientists for research on childbirth defects, skin cancer and leprosy.

It was one of Lewis' armadillos that proved a hazard of sorts to Costner's run-down golf pro as the character tried to win the U.S. Open to impress a girl in the 1996 film "Tin Cup."

The armadillo breeder and wrangler was president of both the World Armadillo Breeding and Racing Assn. and the International Armadillo Appreciation Society.

So it was only natural that he browbeat the Texas Legislature until it finally, in 1995, accepted the armadillo as its official small state mammal. (The longhorn is Texas' official large state mammal, and the Mexican free-tailed bat is its official flying state mammal.)

During the battle for passage, certain legislators derided the creature as "a god-awful animal" or "lowly, mudslinging and cowardly" and said it was unfit to symbolize the state.

Lewis fired off a letter to the state officials, countering:

"The armadillo is determined. Once it makes up its mind to move, nothing will stop it. It will run over anything it can and tunnel under anything it can't. If it can't do either, it will jump straight up in the air. Now ain't that just like a Texan?"

A widower, Lewis is survived by one daughter, Kathleen Maxwell; one son, Samuel Jr.; six siblings and two grandsons.

I've seen a huge rattle snake slipping off an armadillos shell in a humiliating way while trying to attack it & the armadillo didnt even finch

Armadillos aren't bullet proof.
Bullets can pretty much ricochet back off anything given the right angle.
Bullets can ricochet off water.
Water isn't bullet proof.
Although it does tend to be a drama queen always reenacting the oscar scene from The Mask.


Poison.
Old age.
Baiting them to dive bars, getting them drunk, and into bed with the filthiest bar fly imaginable.
Land mines.
Lawn mowers.
Put a bunch of McDonald's outside their barrow so they get really fat and can't get out and just kind of roll around.
Give them as pets to young serial killers.
I already went the fat joke route but tell a fat guy that there's a quesadillo under the house.


Anything is possible.
Could be aliens did it.
Could be it was a half blind retired sniper in an armadillo ghillie suit wanting to exact revenge for past wrongs in vietnam.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In order for this to be true the guy would have had to be standing about 3-5' away, fired the gun with his feet and strike the armadillo on its side. Even if there was a steel statue of an armadillo the bullet couldn't come back to where it was fired from. Impossible. Throw a tennis ball at a basketball and see if it comes back to where it's thrown from.

Uh, they do a a lot of drinkin in east Texas.

every action can have multiple reactions... i take it you know every reaction a low caliber bullet can have?

never found the armadillo, adds "maybe he only THOUGHT he was shooting an Armadillo" to the possibilities list.

A Texas armadillo.

The armadillo racing assoc, sounds like fun ;)

We didn't have armadillo's but we did race cockroaches at Lackland Air Force base in Tx. when we were training with them. The big 2 inch ones. We would number them with black marker on their backs. If you had a "stud" you would keep him in a box until the next race... and you chucked the chumps.

it got pretty competitive $$$

That isn't low caliber ballistics, that's herpes.