The next time you hear a loud “crack” outside on a moonless winter night, don’t assume it’s someone firing a weapon. It could just be an exploding tree. In Collin County, Texas, locals recently heard a number of trees cracking in the icy weather. “We listened to them all night. Sounds like gunshots going off,” Lauren Reber of Princeton said, as reported by NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth. In 2005, “exploding maple trees” were the basis of an April Fool’s Day hoax from the media. But while trees don’t exactly detonate like bombs, they have long been seen as vulnerable to the frigid weather this time of year. In “Works and Days,” a guide to farming written around 700 B.C., the ancient Greek poet Hesiod tells of the harsh conditions during “Lenaion,” a month corresponding to January and February: “In the month of Lenaion the days are bad; they skin oxen …