Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Bird-watching—and, necessarily, listening—has exploded in popularity in recent years. But put your ears a little closer to the ground, and you might hear a quieter but just as potent kind of song coming from a little further down the food chain. That is, if you don’t squash the singer first. Yes, bugs make complex and fascinating sounds, and they’re not just coming from the cicadas and crickets that keep you up on hot summer nights. Take the leafcutter ant, which is active in Texas in the winter. “You can pick one up and hear it squeak,” says University of Texas entomologist Alex Wild. “There are all sorts of insects singing to each other for the same reason that birds are doing it. If you just…

The post Meet the Beetles on Graham Reynolds’s New Album Celebrating the Sounds of Insects appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) announced on Thursday the finalists for the fifty-ninth annual National Magazine Awards. Texas Monthly was nominated for two National Magazine Awards: the February 2023 “Texas Icons” issue is a finalist in the single-topic issue category, and executive editor Michael Hall’s May 2023 profile of Houston folklorist Mack McCormick, “Hellhounds on His Trail,” is a finalist in the profile-writing category.Executive editor Jeff Salamon spearheaded the February 2023 issue, which commemorated Texas Monthly‘s fiftieth anniversary; it was an enormous team effort, involving dozens of writers and contributions from much of the editorial staff. The Mack McCormick profile, which followed up on a feature Hall wrote in 2002 and had been years in the making, was also edited by Salamon. ASME…

The post Texas Monthly Is a Finalist for Two National Magazine Awards appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

A Wise County sheriff’s deputy, responding to a complaint that someone had dumped spaghetti on a man’s yard, determined that the culprit was the caller’s neighbor, who had thrown a dish his mother made for him onto the man’s property. A man lying unconscious in a bullet-hole-ridden truck in a San Antonio parking lot failed for hours to awaken as law enforcement officers, worried because they spotted a gun beside him, yelled at him through a loudspeaker, detonated a flash-bang grenade, and only managed to rouse him from his slumber when a SWAT team forced its way into his vehicle. Two dogs were taken to an animal control shelter after being caught on camera scratching the paint and biting the front panels off of cars…

The post Meanwhile, in Texas: The Man Who Really, Really Didn’t Like His Mom’s Spaghetti appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Latin Name: Leopardus pardalisSize: Thirty to forty inches long and no more than thirty poundsHabitat: Dense thornscrub near waterThe ghost cat pads through the brush on silent, velvety paws. Creeping nimbly under low-lying branches, it uses highly evolved night vision to zero in on prey. A sudden flash of golden brown eyes is swiftly followed by the swipe of razor-sharp claws, a hiss, and a fatal pounce upon an unlucky mouse or rabbit. Then the cat vanishes into the night, where it’s always watching but rarely seen. We’re talking, of course, about what may be Texas’s most elusive and beautiful creature: the ocelot, a small but powerful wildcat that has captivated humans for millennia. It frequently appears in ancient Mesoamerican art, and Salvador Dalí kept…

The post The Lovable Ocelot Is Ready for Its Comeback appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Maybe you’ve heard that old urban legend about the guy who adopts what he thinks is a puppy. The location changes: sometimes it’s Mexico, sometimes the Bay Area. The “guy” can be anything from a tourist unfamiliar with the fauna of the region he’s visiting to a mom coerced by her puppy-loving kids. But one aspect is consistent: the “puppy” is not actually a puppy. It’s a giant, monstrous rat. In Texas and Louisiana, this urban legend usually ends with a nutria. Quite literally a rodent of unusual size, nutria (Myocastor coypus, scientifically) can reach 22 pounds and two feet in length (not counting their ratlike tail, which can grow as long as a foot and a half). The species is originally from South America and…

The post Nutria Deserve Their Reputation as Giant, Nasty Swamp Rats appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!