California: State's drought having pronounced effect on wildlife

[Victor_c3]

1. Yup and it trickles all the way down (or up) the food chain

My first thougtht is "boo-hoo, who cares about baby squirrels. I'm hungry and I'm going to go get a big fat bacon burger to eat." However, these things do matter.

A couple of years back abnormal winter weather patterns took a toll on some sort of "white footed field mouse" or something with a name like that in my area. As a result, the following spring and summer ticks carrying lime disease didn't have a primary host to land on and were more likely to attach to pets and humans.

Pets in my area are treated with various tick-killing drugs and this in turn caused a reduction the following year in the population of ticks which in turn reduced a food supply for various animals that feed on ticks and small bugs like them causing them to eat other alternative foods...

This sort of thing has very far reaching effects and ripples its way accross ecosystems.

Anyways, I am going to go get that bacon burger that I was talking about in the begining of my post.