--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.

--Chad Love

Who can forget the amazing footage of the Japanese tsunami sweeping literal mountains of debris into the ocean? Now scientists say all that debris - millions of tons of it - is slowly making its way to the west coast.

 
From this story on mercurynews.com:
Millions of tons of debris that washed into the ocean during Japan's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in March -- everything from furniture to roofs to pieces of cars -- are now moving steadily toward the United States and raising concerns about a potential environmental headache. Scientists using computer models say the wreckage, which is scattered across hundreds of miles of the Pacific Ocean, is expected to reach Midway and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands by next spring and beaches in California, Oregon and Washington in 2013 or early 2014.

By Dave Hurteau

From the Billings Gazette:
Lost in the Big Horn Mountains, presumed dead by family and friends and hallucinating because of too much wind and too little food, Travis McMahan, stumbling up a creek, found a dead fish.

“It looked all rotten,” he said. . . . “I cut its head off and skinned its back,” he said of the fish. “And there was good meat in there, so I ate it.”

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.