The other day, Amanda Walding was driving to work near her home in Texas when something in the road ahead caught her eye.
At first, it appeared to be a family of raccoons or opossums. From a distance, Walding could see a train of little babies marching in a row behind their mother, from one side of the street to the other.
But then she got closer and put on the brakes — and that’s when she realized this was actually a rare kind of sighting.
The animals Walding had stopped for were, in fact, armadillos. But there was something unique about this family — so much so she decided to share her encounter with officials from Texas Parks and Wildlife.
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 … wait, what?” Texas Parks and Wildlife wrote in a post. “Texas armadillos always give birth to identical quadruplets. But this mom has 7 pups — a rare occurrence!”
Here’s footage of Walding’s surprise encounter with that unexpectedly large family:
“I had seen baby armadillos one other time in the wild a couple years ago. That momma had the typical four babies an armadillo has,” Walding told The Dodo. “I knew this was special and exciting when I counted that she had seven.”
The armadillo mom certainly had her hands full — though, in the end, says Walding, she was able to shuffle all seven babies safely across the road.
But how did this mom come to have such a big family?
