Q. I am an avid South Texas hunter. A while back, I was en route to Concan and stopped to get gas when I saw a group of grown men shamelessly flaunting their pink camouflage hats and shirts. In almost three decades of hunting I have never seen a pink tree. Please tell me why this is happening.
David Travis
South Padre Island
January 2010

A: Several explanations come to mind. As an avid enthusiast of the outdoors, you know well that when a person (like, for example, Harry Whittington) wishes to ensure that he will remain visible at all times to his fellow hunters (like, for example, Dick Cheney), he will accent his camouflage with a splash of blaze-orange. And if that person (again, Whittington) feels that circumstances call for him to take an extra step for safety’s sake, he might easily conclude that head-to-toe pink camo would not only get him noticed but possibly so confuse and dismay his companions as to cause them to lay down their firearms entirely and just sit on a stump feeling funny. Then again, based on your description, the Texanist wonders if you might have crossed paths with the elusive creature known as the Fabulous Ol’ Boy. If so, congratulations. This is a rare and thrilling encounter for any outdoorsman. The Fabulous Ol’ Boy—not to be confused with his less colorful cousin, the Good Ol’ Boy—is identifiable by his habit of vivid self-expression, eschewing the gender-specific color palettes prescribed by his upbringing while still clinging tightly to his gun and truck. Theories abound as to where the Fabulous Ol’ Boy comes from, but seeing one is always a treat. As for the existence of pink trees, the Texanist recalls once finding himself taking cover in a grove of pulsating pink foliage while waiting out a disturbance brought on by the ingestion of a hallucinogenic mushroom tea that was surreptitiously served to him at an otherwise pleasant afternoon yard party outside Blanco. In trying to go unnoticed by fellow partygoers and the frighteningly grotesque creatures that tormented him that day, an outfit of pink camouflage would have suited him just fine.

Q: What are the guidelines for male friends helping each other apply sunscreen? I was recently down at the coast with a buddy of mine. My girlfriend wasn’t there, so when I was putting on some sunscreen, I asked him if he’d mind doing my back. He nearly had a conniption fit and acted like I had made some sort of depraved request. Did I err?
Name withheld
August 2008

A: Blessed with a preternaturally bronzed (the fact-checkers say orange) and perpetually glistening (the fact-checkers say unwashed) beach-friendly physique, like that of Hercules film series star Reg Park (who, the fact-checkers say, succumbed to skin cancer in 2007), the Texanist has never himself had much use for sunscreen. His position vis-à-vis ultraviolet radiation shares much with the president’s onetime stance toward Islamic extremism: Bring it on. But he is keenly aware of the medical establishment’s point of view regarding the harmful effects of the sun’s rays and knows well the strong bonds, but equally strong boundaries, of male friendship. It would be nice if these forces never collided, but male-on-male sunblock application is hardly the only case of fellowship’s leading to manly activities that can be misconstrued. Has your friend never hugged a man after a victory in sport? Slapped a man on the buttocks for a job well-done? Pinned a man to the floor during a night of drunken Indian leg wrestling that gets a little out of hand? As long as the summer sun shines on Texas’s beautiful beaches, men will share shirtless moments frolicking beneath it. If your friend is resolute in his reluctance to “do your back,” maybe next time you should bring the girls.

Q: Is noodling an advisable catfishing technique?
Ken Cluley
Wichita Falls
June 2008

A: Noodling, also known by such regionalisms as hogging, dogging, tickling, or grabbling, is a rudimentary method in which the “angler” submerges himself in a body of water, uses his hand as both lure and hook, and after getting a bite, grapples with behemoth channel, blue, or flathead catfish like a sort of Jacques Cousteau—cum—Fritz Von Erich. Noodling is legal and acceptable behavior in such lawless wastelands as Oklahoma and Arkansas, but around here it is apt to net you a handsome fine, as will the taking by hand of any fish, game or not. When the Texanist hankers for a physical encounter with a lunker, he prefers to laze about on the end of a dock with a well-stocked cooler and a can of night crawlers rather than go three Tarzanian rounds with a Moby Dick of the mud.

Q: I’m heading down to the beach this Labor Day for the first time ever, and I have heard that the jellyfish can be really bad on the Texas coast. How do you avoid them, and what do you do if you are stung by one?
Justin Torres
Arlington
May 2009

A: The Texanist, thank God, has never tangled with any of the three jellyfish most common to the Texas coast. Nor has he endured the venomous lash of the hated Portuguese man-of-war. He does, however, harbor vivid memories of a bloody childhood incident that involved having his bare foot impaled to the hilt by the barbed dorsal spine of a washed up hardhead catfish, but that is a fish tale he’ll save for his fish therapist’s couch. When beachgoing, the Texanist is always coated with a liberal slathering of cocoa butter and always has his full, uncut chest, leg, and back plumage on display (no manscaper he). Perhaps the ample vegetable fat and body hair, like armor, have unintentionally protected him from the medusa’s torturous tentacles, or maybe, somehow, it has something to do with his sure-footed swagger. The Texanist can’t be certain.

The point is that while blooms of jellies can be abundant along the Texas Riviera, a