Jim Hightower, the witty former Agriculture Commissioner of Texas, likes to quote a friend who observes that "there's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos."

The town is mentioned in the Robert Earl Keen song "Armadillo Jackel" as the place where they pay $2.50 for dead armadillos.

And he even castigated moderate Democrats: "There ain't nothin' in the middle of the road," he scoffed in his East Texas twang, "but yellow stripes and dead armadillos."

Senators wavering on the nomination, she said, should remember that "there are only two things in the middle of the road: yellow stripes and dead armadillos."

He is, after all, the man who once admonished centrist Democrats that "there's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos."

Neil Hamel, the independent heroine of this series of regional mysteries, is herself a lawyer who acknowledges the distinction between a dead lawyer and a dead armadillo on the highway.

You think there'd be so much as a dead armadillo out in the road if I weren't inside this house?

This one involved a businessman in his limo, his driver, and a dead armadillo.

But Karl reveals his other hand from behind his back, tossing a dead armadillo into Barbarosa's lap.