When I first experienced the Texas outdoors I was very skittish with snake concerns. Over the years I've lost that skittishness.
There was a point in time, long ago, that a random root on a trail could cause the flight response.
I'd been Texasified long enough by 2002 that a large rattlesnake encounter on the Cedar Hills State Park DORBA mountain bike trail did not bother me. Too much.
But.
Today I was back on the pleasantly temperatured, windy Tandy Hills, walking through the dehydrating Tandy Jungle, when I saw what, for a second or two, I thought was a very big snake.
I think the snake stick may be the latest work of the Tandy Hills Guerrilla Artist.
Today I took self-anointed botany expert, Mr. Ed, with me to the Tandy Hills. Mr. Ed is a bit of a know-it-all. Not as bad as the aforementioned Gar the Nerd, but, still quite a know-it-all.
Well, Mr. Ed determined that the trees with dead leaves are not the trees with dead leaves of the normal fall season falling leaves type. Mr. Ed claims the trees along ridges do not have as much access to underground water as foliage growing in ravines and along creek beds. And so they are dying. Or going dormant.
Is Mother Nature's Great North Texas Drought and record breaking temperatures getting rid of some vegetation on the Tandy Hills that is not native to the prairie? I have no idea. I'm not a botanist. Nor to I pretend to be one on the Internet.
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