Strange things are happening

My grandfather was a great believer in following the signs of the earth to predict weather....for example when wild onions were blooming, rain was coming.  I don't know how valid his beliefs were, though I always thought he was infallible. I do know that lately there have been lots of things happening in my own back yard that haven't happened here before.

We live in a suburban area, but our house backs up to a river.  On the other side of the river is a golf course.  The neighborhood is quiet.  We have lots of regular visits to our yard by deer, turkeys, raccoons, cotton tail rabbits, opossums, skunks (2 different kinds...aren't we lucky) ground squirrels, brown squirrels, rock squirrels, armadillos, porcupines, javalinas, snakes (Western Diamondback Rattler, Rock Rattlesnake, Coachwhip, Texas Rat Snake, Bull Snake, Texas Long-nosed Snake) geckos, Texas Spiny Lizard, Skinks-  and, so far over 140 different species of Birds...I won't list all of those.

This year in the space of a couple of days, we have had a Gray fox family make regular visits (they seem to like the watermelon and canteloupe rinds we put out for the deer), a red fox and a bobcat.  We have seen the foxes in the area before, but the bobcat is relatively rare in the area.  They may be here in larger numbers than we suspect but they are rather secretive and mostly nocturnal.  As far as we know, the bobcat or the foxes have not been in the yard before.  So, does this mean anything?  Is a hard winter ahead of us?  A long drought...in West Texas that is almost normal...although we had one of the wettest July's ever!  The last two days have set new records for heat here --106 and 107...and we had the dubious honor of having the highest temperatures in the State for both days.  I guess we will find out when it is time for us to know.  One of my grandfather's standard answers to the question, "When will it rain?"  was, "When the wind stops blowing."  When will the wind stop blowing? was answered with "When it rains!"