--Chad Love

As the drought afflicting the southern part of the nation deepens, wildlife is moving out of the woods and into our yards in search of what little food and water is available.

From this story in the Houston Chronicle: 
The rat looked dead. It was face down, arms splayed, in the big shallow pan of water placed near the fence as succor for the wildlife suffering in adjacent woods left blistering hot and deadly dry by Texas' ongoing drought. Every morning, we'd fill the pan with clean, cool water and then watch as a steady parade of wildlife trickled from the woods to slake their obviously considerable thirst or nibble at the mix of millet, sunflowers, shelled corn and other food we scattered for them. There were cat squirrels, swamp rabbits, possums, coons and all manner of birds. It was an all-day procession, a sure sign the deepening drought was causing wildlife that normally survived by living wary and crepuscular lives to do something they normally would not do - abandon the cover of the forest and expose themselves in a wide-open yard during the middle of the day to get a drink of water or a bite of food...The rat, it turned out, wasn't dead at all. It was simply floating in the water, trying to keep cool and hydrated.

--Dave Maccar

Do pride yourself on your timbercraft skills and your aptitude with an axe? Maybe you do...but can you split wood as fast as the guy in the video below?

It’s a heck of a technique and doesn’t require any more than a fairly short length of chain, a small, sturdy rubber belt, a fastener and a hefty-headed maul. Has anyone ever tried this or seen it done before? Thanks to Sports Illustrated, who turned us on to this clip.

After you check out the vid, click here and test the rest of you timbercraft knowledge with our “Could You Chop Down a Tree With An Axe?” quiz and see how you stack up against other F&S readers.

By Chad Love

So say you're stuck in the woods, the temperature's dropping fast and you need shelter and fire, quickly. There are trees all around but you have neither saw nor axe. All you have is your knife. It's not even a big Rambo-inspired, serrated-edge survival sword with a picatinny rail, but a twelve-dollar plastic-handled mora with a little four-inch blade. Hey, no problem.

By Dave Hurteau

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s request for a massive hunt of an estimated 100,000 pythons roaming the Everglades in Florida has been approved by Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist.

Crist has asked wildlife officials to start trapping pythons immediately. This comes a couple of weeks after a 2-year-old girl was strangled by a pet Burmese python in central Florida.