A TEXAS MAN SHOT AN ARMADILLO THREE TIMES, BUT ONE OF THE BULLETS RICOCHETED OFF ITS ARMORED SHELL AND SHATTERED HIS JAW

Some people say that everything is bigger in Texas, but few expected the local wildlife to be bulletproof. A quiet morning in the Marietta area of East Texas turned into a bizarre medical emergency when a resident attempted to remove a small animal from his property. What followed was a physics lesson that most people only see in cartoons, proving that sometimes nature has its own way of returning fire.

The incident occurred in the early hours of a Thursday morning in 2015. A local man spotted an armadillo wandering across his yard and decided to take matters into his own hands. Armed with a .38 revolver, he stepped outside and fired three rounds at the creature. The outcome was not what he anticipated. Rather than dispatching the animal, at least one of the bullets struck the armadillo’s hard exterior and bounced back toward the shooter.

Cass County Sheriff Larry Rowe reported that the man suffered a wound to his jaw from the deflected projectile. Emergency services transported him to a nearby hospital, where he received treatment for the minor injury. Interestingly, the primary target of the gunfire managed to escape the scene entirely. The sheriff’s department noted that they could not locate the animal, leaving its condition a mystery. It effectively vanished into the Texas brush after potentially surviving a direct hit from a handgun.

While this sounds like a freak occurrence, the Nine-banded armadillo is surprisingly well-equipped for survival. These creatures are the only living mammals that sport a leathery, armored shell. This protective layer consists of plates of dermal bone covered by small, overlapping scales known as scutes. This shell is primarily designed to protect them from thorny vegetation and the teeth of smaller predators. However, as this 2015 event demonstrated, the density of the bone can be sufficient to alter the trajectory of a low-velocity bullet under specific angles.

This was not the first time a southern homeowner learned this lesson the hard way. Just months prior to the Texas incident, a man in Georgia attempted a similar feat with even more disastrous results. In that case, the shooter fired a 9mm pistol at an armadillo. The bullet successfully bounced off the animal, traveled through a fence, and entered a nearby mobile home. It eventually struck his mother-in-law while she was sitting in her recliner. Unlike the Texas case, the Georgia animal did not survive the encounter, but the incident highlighted the extreme unpredictability of firing at hard-shelled targets.

The internet reaction to the Texas shooting was swift and predictably colorful. Comedian and animal rights advocate Ricky Gervais famously coined the term “Karmadillo” on social media to describe the event. The story quickly went viral, tapping into a fascination with “justice” delivered by the animal kingdom. Many commenters pointed out the absurdity of using a firearm against a creature that is largely harmless to humans. Armadillos generally spend their time digging for grubs and insects, posing little threat other than making a mess of a manicured lawn.

From a ballistic standpoint, the incident serves as a stark warning about backstop safety and the physics of hard surfaces. Revolvers like the .38 caliber used in this incident often fire lead bullets that can easily deform or deflect when hitting bone or dense material at an angle. Safety experts frequently remind gun owners that projectiles do not always stop upon impact. They can skim across surfaces like a stone skipping over water.

The legal and ethical implications of backyard pest control also come into play here. In many states, discharging a firearm within certain distances of homes is illegal, regardless of whether a pest is present. The sheer fluke of a bullet returning to hit the shooter in the face serves as a violent reminder of these risks. Fortunately for the man in Marietta, his injuries were not life-threatening, but the story remains a legendary cautionary tale in the annals of strange Texas news.

As for the armadillo, it remains a folk hero of sorts. By surviving the encounter and leaving the shooter to explain his jaw injury to the sheriff, the creature became a symbol of natural resilience. It serves as a reminder that even the smallest creatures have defenses that deserve respect—or at the very least, a bit more distance.