This is not a random remembering, it's an up-to-date memory

Today, I was going through my Flickr contacts' latest postings, and happened upon an armadillo story by my FlickrFriend Kimra, who is the consummate animal lover
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kimra/3261358713/in/photostream/

"Once upon a time"...the year was sometime around 1975, we were hosting a family reunion at our house. There were folks from my mother's family who came from all over Texas for a couple of days of togetherness.

When the time came to retire, we noticed that there were a couple of teenagers missing, and their mothers became frantic. I wondered what could possibly happen to them in our neighborhood, but decided to humor my cousins by appearing concerned. In fact, I actually thought they might possibly become lost, because a lot of the subdivision was still open fields and wooded areas.

I got on my bicycle, and headed off into the deep, deep darkness of the night, in hopes of being the one to recover the lost boys.

On a deserted street up on the hill, I heard an armadillo shuffling along in the grass nearby.

Since our neighbor Gloria had once said she'd never seen an armadillo, I thought I could impress her by showing up on her doorstep with an armadillo in hand, so I dismounted and stepped into the grass, with the intention of capturing the beast.

It was too dark to see it, and in fact, I never did see it, but it led me on a merry chase, and eventually got away, but not before I'd slipped on a rock in the darkness, and got a very painful bruise on my hip. I suppose that since it was too dark to see, and the armadillo was not accustomed to seeing very much anyway, he had the advantage.

I finally gave up my quest, returning home without armadillo or teenagers. The lost boys had never been lost at all, they'd found some neighbors who had a pool table in their garage, and were hanging out with them, oblivious to their mothers' concerns.

Those boys are grown up now, and no doubt have grown children of their own (we no longer have reunions), but I'll bet, if I told them this story, they would not remember a thing about it.