To do! (Also known as 'NaBloPoMo: Day 2')

© 2009 Radha Ramachandran

The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down...

~ An exceprt from the poem The Armadillo by Elizabeth Bishop

***

'Mother,' he said, 'there are two new animals in the woods to- day, and the one that you said couldn't swim, swims, and the one that you said couldn't curl up, curls; and they've gone shares in their prickles, I think, because both of them are scaly all over, instead of one being smooth and the other very prickly; and, besides that, they are rolling round and round in circles, and I don't feel comfy.'

'Son, son!' said Mother Jaguar ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'a Hedgehog is a Hedgehog, and can't be anything but a Hedgehog; and a Tortoise is a Tortoise, and can never be anything else.'

'But it isn't a Hedgehog, and it isn't a Tortoise. It's a little bit of both, and I don't know its proper name.'

'Nonsense!' said Mother Jaguar. 'Everything has its proper name. I should call it "Armadillo" till I found out the real one. And I should leave it alone.'

~ An excerpt from the story 'The Beginning of the Armadillos' by Rudyard Kipling

***

Posted exactly 4 minutes before it's time for ' NaBloPoMo:Day 3'!!!

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Update
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Here's another (simpler) version (which I must admit I rather like):



And a version of the original sketch for posterity:

I think I'm going to call him Arnold.
Arnold, the amateur skateboarding Armadillo.