Hiking Amongst The Dying Trees Of The Tandy Hills Thinking About Gar The Nerd's Unpleasant Warning About Snakes

This morning a little rain fell. That stopped falling before I was swimming, so there was no swimming in the rain this morning.

By the time the time of the day arrived for my daily aerobic stimulation it was only 90.3 degrees and windy.

So, I decided to drive to the top of Mount Tandy and do a full Tandy Hills Hike. Something I've not done in quite some time.

The full Tandy Hills Hike had me seeing the full Tandy Hills, for the first time in awhile, and what I saw surprised me.

The prairie appears to be under severe drought stress. A lot of the leaves on a lot of the trees have taken on fall foliage color mode. But, I think the leaves have died from lack of water, not their usual leaf shedding cycle. I hope this does not bode ill for a lot of dead trees not able to survive the drought.

This morning Gar the Nerd, formerly known as Gar the Texan, emailed me with the subject line being "An Unpleasant Warning."

With the first line of the email being "Something you might be able to use on your Weather Blog :)."

I was a little confused about the reference to my Weather Blog, but then I remembered an odd blogging Gar the Nerd wrote on his blog, about my blog, where Gar the Nerd said I post 70 - 90 times a day, with about 90% of the bloggings having to do with the temperature.

This was a bizarre exaggeration by Gar the Nerd. It is never more than 50 bloggings a day, with rarely more than half of them being about the temperature.

You can read Gar the Nerd's Readerless Ramblings by going here, where you get to read Gar the Nerd tell you all about minute minutia in Gar the Nerd's world. It is really quite fascinating and the temperature is very rarely mentioned.

Speaking of the temperature and the drought, it is currently only 101.1, coming up on 4 in the afternoon. And still a bit windy, but not windy enough for a wind chill factor to make that 101.1 feel cooler. Instead the heat index's humidity is making it feel like 104. Again.

I forgot to mention what Gar the Nerd's Unpleasant Warning was.

Well, apparently the aforementioned drought has the snake population of Texas starving and thirsty. Snake experts expect an explosive invasion of snakes in places they usually tend not to visit.

Like backyards and swimming pools. Starting in late August (which is now) and September.

The 4 most common types of venomous Texas snakes you might have show up at your door or backyard are Rattlesnakes, Texas Coral Snakes, Copperheads and Cottonmouths.

Cottonmouths are also known as Water Moccasins. That'd be the type snake you might find yourself swimming with.