EXPLORING NATURE: A TAD WARM

It has been a tad warmish lately.

Birds are using pot holders to pull worms from the hot ground; chickens are laying hardboiled eggs. And my backyard birdbath has been doing a booming business in avian visitors — everything from tiny chickadees to large black vultures.

We have a way to go to beat the all-time hottest temperature ever recorded in Texas — 120 degrees. That first occurred in Seymour on Aug. 12, 1936, and was matched in Monahans on June 28, 1994.

It’s hard to believe, but I’m old enough to remember when wholehouse air conditioning was a rarity. And I recall when cars had no air conditioning at all. I remember fixing wet towels in the car window to help cool things down on long vacation trips.

Eventually, window units were used in homes and in my part of West Texas, we had evaporative coolers that relied on air blowing over cool water.

I now set my AC at 78 degrees in daytime and run a fan to cool things down before turning in around 11 p.m. each night. So far, I’ve been able to not run any cooling unit on a 24-hour cycle.

It scares me to think of what I’d do if my electricity went off; I’d probably go out and sit under my big oak tree and run a garden hose over my head.

Finally, let me provide a couple of ideas for events to consider this month.

A special sand castle building competition will be held Aug. 20- 21 in Galveston, and it should be fun to see what these professional builders come up with. Call 409-797-5000 for information.

Closer to home, Master Naturalist Bonnie Tull will be the speaker at the quarterly meeting of the Wimberley Birding Society, set for 10 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 15 in the Wimberley Community Center. Visit wimbirds. org for more information.