When taken home and fed it soon becomes very tame and friendly. It can be handled with safety, for when it is not rolled up its spines lie flat along its back, so that its friends can stroke its back and scratch its nose without harm. These it likes to have done. When it is put on a table it does not a bit mind taking a dive to the floor, for it rolls up so to fall on its spines and thus is not hurt.
A tame hedgehog is a good thing to keep in a garden or kitchen, for it helps to clear the one of worms and the other of roaches and sometimes will catch and kill a rat. It is not afraid to attack snakes, even poisonous ones like the viper. The poison does not seem to do it any harm.
I have spoken of the armadillo as a pet and as an animal that rolls itself into a ball like the hedgehog. Instead of spines, it has a covering of hard, bony plates, which cover the whole body, even the tail. When it rolls itself up it is like a hard stone and can laugh within its coat of mail at the enemies which roll it about but cannot get in.
The armadillo is an American animal, and is found in our country in the state of Texas. It goes south from there through Mexico and on to South America, where it is found everywhere. It lives in large numbers in the woods and on the great grass plains. In its food and habits it is much like the hedgehog, and like it burrows in the ground. To do this it has very strong claws, and these it can use to defend itself when it takes a fancy to fight.
The same person who kept the white rat I have spoken of also had a pet armadillo, though the two were not very good friends. The armadillo was very quick in its motions and the first time it saw the rat it went for it like a lightning flash. The rat was one of the kind of vermin it fed on in its natural state and it thought here was a good chance for a feast. In a minute it had the rat driven into a corner where there was no hole or hiding place and where it stood up as if praying with its paws in the air. In a minute more the armadillo would have made mince meat of the rat with its sharp claws, but its master just then came to the rescue, and saved his pet rat.
The Three-banded Armadillo. An Animal in a Coat of Mail
In the end he punished the armadillo by making a little wagon in which he made it draw the rat about as a passenger.
His armadillo, he tells us, was a famous sleeper, lying asleep about twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four. But in its wakeful hour it was very active and lively. It loved to lie before the fire, but if turned over on its back and scratched it grew furious. It could not turn itself back again much easier than a turtle.
The one thing that threw it into a panic was a sudden noise. If, for instance, the poker was thrown down, the scared animal would make a bee-line for its home, and if it missed the mark would tumble around in a fright till it found the entrance to its cage. When it got used to the noise of the poker any other noise would set it off in the same way, and it never got over its panic at a strange and sudden noise.