Texas is wonderful, but it’s also home to some of the most disgusting creatures on God’s green earth.
For every beautiful vista, every awesome live band, every plate of barbecue or Tex-Mex, there’s a creepy-crawly critter lurking in the shadows waiting to ruin your day. Vermin might not be bigger in Texas, but sometimes they feel like it.
Let’s talk about some of the worst varmints in the state, ranked from “gross” to “I’m moving.” (Some honorable mentions that didn’t make the list: crickets, cicadas, and stinging fireworms.)
Armadillos
Sorry Texas, but the armadillo sucks.
Sure, there’s a lot to like about one of the state mammals of Texas. It looks like a cat-sized military tank.
But it eats gross insects like beetles, cockroaches, wasps, yellow jackets, fire ants, scorpions, spiders, snails, and white grubs. Good on you, armadillos! You might also know armadillos as roadkill, their deaths exacerbated by their tendency to jump straight up in the air when startled, leading to some unfortunate collisions with vehicle undercarriages. In a pinch, they’re a handy meal. Humans have eaten armadillos throughout history — during the Depression they were known as “poor man’s pork” and “Hoover hogs.”
So while they may seem useful and hapless, the armadillo makes this list for one reason: besides humans, they’re the only animal that can contract leprosy.
Yes, an armadillo can give you the plague.
Sure, actual cases of humans contracting leprosy from an armadillo are “extremely rare” but who wants to take that risk?
Sorry armadillos, but you’re on the list.
Cockroaches
You know them, you hate them (especially if you live in Houston): roaches.
No one in human history has ever walked into a house and thought, “Oh good! Roaches!”
That’s because cockroaches are, more than anything, just gross. There’s 4,500 species of cockroaches, and only 30 are considered pests, but still. They get everywhere. And they’re just… roachy. There’s simply nothing redeeming about roaches. The American cockroach can spread at least 33 kinds of bacteria, including E. coli and Salmonella, not to mention six kinds of parasitic worms and at least seven other kinds of human pathogens. Oh and their urine and fecal droppings can cause allergic reactions and asthma attacks. Yay! (Editor’s note: Circa 2014, the former office of The Waco Tribune-Herald often had cockroaches in the bathrooms, and one once fell from the ceiling.)
Sure, they’re resilient — roaches can live a week without their heads and can go a month without food. (That’s probably why they’ve been around for more than 280 million years.)
But unless you’re a cockroach, that’s not great news.
And we’re pretty sure that dinosaurs weren’t happy to share a planet with them, either. When contacted by The Barbed Wire, dinosaurs declined comment on that matter.
About the only good thing you can say about cockroaches is they love democracy.
According to the sustainability site, Treehugger.com, roaches don’t live in a colony ruled by a monarch. Instead they “often form more egalitarian and democratic aggregations, in which all adults can reproduce and contribute to group decisions.”
That’s admirable, but it’s not enough to keep roaches off this list.
Wild Hogs
As any farmer will tell you, wild hogs are Satan incarnate.
While they’re not native to the Americas (thanks Columbus), they have adapted magnificently.
The wild hog population exploded in the early 1980s, and they absolutely love Texas. Of the 6.9 million feral hogs in the U.S., about 2.6 million live here. Wild hogs can thrive in almost any Texas ecosystem, they’re smart, they’ll eat anything, and they have no natural predators.
They reproduce in numbers that would make jackrabbits blush.
Wild hogs can start reproducing at six months old and they can have up to 12 piglets per year.
And once they’re grown, they’re terrifying. They’ve got tusks, thick protective skin, and are absolute units, with an average weight of 150-200 pounds. Oh, and a wild hog can reach top speeds of up to 30 miles per hour.
But where wild hogs cause the most damage is in the agricultural industry. Researchers have estimated one wild hog can cause at least $1,000 in damages in a single night. According to estimates, wild hogs in Texas cause $500 million in damage annually.
And that’s not just from eating crops. They also trample plants, not to mention all the rooting and wallowing. In addition to crops, they also can damage hay fields, orchards, farming equipment, and fences. Wild hogs can also carry and transmit at least 30 bacterial, fungal, and viral diseases.
In Texas, it’s legal to hunt feral hogs without a license and honestly …. Good.
One of the absolute best days on Old Twitter (rest in peace, sweet prince) was the “30-50 feral hogs” day in 2019, when William McNabb, an Arkansas resident, tweeted — as a justification for owning advanced semi-automatic rifles: “Legit question for rural Americans – How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?” At its peak, “feral hogs” was trending nationwide with over 50,000 tweets. The responses were some all-time best jokes, and this event prompted someone to create a game where players defend their small children from between 30 and 50 hogs.
Mosquitoes
Though we wanted to put wild hogs as the worst vermin in the Lone Star State, nothing can compare to the all-time pest champ: mosquitoes.
We’ve all had to deal with mosquitos. They’re annoying, they leave those angry little bites, and they always seem to take off just before you squish them. Mosquitoes also are everywhere — especially during warm and rainy days, laying eggs in water and developing quickly into swarms of blood-sucking adults.
But mosquitos are far, far more than just a widespread nuisance. They’re also the most dangerous vermin on earth. For one, they’re the biggest carriers of malaria — a potentially fatal disease that includes fever, headache, vomiting, shaking chills, and other flu-like symptoms. It kills more than 400,000 people globally every year, largely young children.
And you may be thinking, “Oh that’s in other countries, not here in Texas.”
Wrong, you ding dongs. In 2023, a handful of malaria cases were reported in Texas and Florida for the first time in two decades. And that’s not all! Mosquitoes also spread West Nile Virus, Eastern Equine Encephalitis, the Zika virus, and heartworm disease in pets.
History professor Timothy Winegard wrote a book about these tiny monsters titled, “The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator.” And he reports a terrifying fact: over the course of human history, 108 billion people have lived on Earth. Nearly half of that total, 52 billion people, have been killed by mosquitoes.
Oh and thanks to climate change, increased temperatures mean that mosquitoes have a longer breeding season.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy a million citronella candles.
(Editor’s note: Want to read about the best varmints in the state? We’ve got you covered.)
