Drought: Five Animals and Pests You're Seeing More of, As They Search for Water

Possums: Cute....from afar.

Some of us were praying for rain even before it was mandated to do so. Houston's been teased more than a frat boy lately, especially early this morning, when chances of actual rain were forecast in the lofty 30 percentages! At 6 a.m. storm clouds gathered and it even smelled like rain. Then poof! The only precipitation that descended upon us was in the form of humidity in the 90s. (If you actually saw rain, will you please tweet us?)

Speaking of tweets, we're seeing more birds than an air traffic controller lately. You? After all, you can go into a pool, a walk-in refrigerator, a bar -- even a plane to take you out of this drought. But what about our little friends who lack passports and credit cards?

"We're getting hammered by everything right now," says Bert the Bug Man (a.k.a. Bert Bertrand, a licensed exterminator). "Smoky brown tree roaches are coming out of the sewer lines to hang in people's foliage because people are trying to keep their plants alive."

So we're not producing enough shite in this drought??

"We just killed a water moccasin off T.C. Jester. I hadn't seen one of those in a long time." Apparently, White Oak Bayou -- which ten years ago almost to the day crested its banks and flooded part of Houston -- wasn't giving the serpent what he needed. "We got a call from a lady who said he was heading for her swimming pool."

Here are the Top Five critters Houstonians are more likely to run into during this sultry siege. (The upside, of course, is that there have been far fewer mosquitoes):

5. Boids, as our uncle from the Northeast would say: Damn boids. Everywhere -- of every stripe and color. They're dive-bombing into any body of water they can find, and sometimes, that's a kamikaze mission. So do them a favor: Put out a dish of water for 'em. Not behind a clear pane of glass, that's beyond cruel. And sprinkle some bread crumbs around to help point the way. "Be kind to your fine-feathered friends/For a duck may be somebody's mother...."

Just looking for water

4. Rats, and we don't mean Charlie Brown. Many say that by leaving out food and water, there's no telling what else you'll attract. The other school of thought is if you don't assuage the critters outside, they'll come in to get what you have inside.

One Southwest Houston resident said she was aghast when water dripped on her from her bedroom ceiling last week. She raced up to the attic to see if the air conditioner's drip pan was overflowing (if you have an a/c you're responsible for and you don't understand the impact of that statement, you'd best crank up your search engines. You're going to have to have some laundry bleach at the ready or, if that fails, have a dry wall repair company on speed dial). It wasn't, so what to do? She called her a/c repair guy, who found a pipe had been gnawed on.

"Rats," he proclaimed flatly. Those friggin' rodents will actually chew your a/c pipes to get to some moisture. We've heard they'll gnaw on the water hoses in a car, too, so have a ten-speed on backup during this siege.