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04.27.2004 - Everyone wants to know what bait to use to catch armadillos in cage traps. After all, it's easy to use peanuts to catch a squirrel, or
cat food to catch an opossum, or marshmallows to catch a raccoon, so surely there's something that we can throw into a cage trap to catch an armadillo. I
shall now examine the various baits that I've heard recommended:
Earthworms: Armadillos eat earthworms, it's true. So I've heard the recommendation of using earthworms for bait. However, this is tricky, because
earthworms tend to be smaller than the bars of a cage trap, and they tend to squirm away or underground. So the solution I've heard is to place the worms
in a nylon stocking and suspend it from the back of the cage. I've never tried this technique. I'll explain why in the end, but if you want to go to the
trouble of obtaining earthworms and sticking them in a stocking and hanging it from the back of the trap, go ahead. It'll do more harm than good, but if you
give it a try, let me know how it goes.
Cabbage: A local "expert" swears up and down by cabbage, and implored me to use it in my armadillo trapping. I tested it three times. In each case, I
placed two traps side by side, with neither having any advantage that I could tell in terms of location or any other factor. By chance, probably, all three times
I caught an armadillo in the cage without the cabbage. Unless cabbage is a deterrent. Which it isn't. But it surely isn't an attractant. The local
"expert" went out of business a few years later, by the way.
Rotting Bananas: I think the theory here is that the banana will attract bugs which will attract armadillos. In this case, one could use about any kind
of food. Hey, rotting meat would attract maggots.
I could list other suggested items, but the truth is this: bait of any kind is not only unneccesary, it's most likely going to impede your aramdillo trapping
by attracting non-target animals like opossums, raccoons, or cats. Armadillos dig their food out of the ground - they rarely eat food already on the surface.
They mostly eat live insects and other invertebrates. However, dillos are very easy to trap without bait. Sure, there's a lot of subtleties that go into it, but
trap placement is really the only relevant factor - place the trap where an armadillo is going to walk, and you've got him.
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