[imgbelt img=earth.jpg]Rain swept through northeastern Arkansas Wednesday, drenching fields and filling creeks. In Texas, however, the land is so dry that that deer are dying. In Zavala and Uvalde counties, no rain has fallen at all since September 22, 2008. The Corpus Christi paper is running a series on the drought in south and central Texas. (You can get to it here.)  In today’s story, the paper reports that deer herds — hunting is an important source of income for ranchers there — re begin devastated by the drought. Some ranchers are paying up to $800 a week for water just to keep deer alive.In other counties, ranchers are selling cattle not just because they are expensive to feed, but because the animals are scalping pasture. The state expects to lose over $4 billion in agriculture production by the end of the year — including $869 million in livestock and $105 million in goats, sheep and honey. Wednesday, while rain flooded streets in eastern Oklahoma temperatures in Central Texas reached 105 degrees.