Welcome to this issue of Stumped by Nature, where we notice nature lurking just beyond our screens, curate a list of outside-y events in Austin, and build community with other folks in the thick of the startup ecosystem.
In this week’s issue:
🥚 Horror, resurrected
🌤️ Upcoming outdoors events. So. Many.
🎃 Pumpkin-adjacent fun
Let’s dig in!
-Nicole
PS. Have a nature-related business or nonprofit? I’m creating a directory. It’s free to join, and you can plop your business details in here. Have your nature-based buddies fill this out too!
PPS. Come meet great people who go outside together: join ATX Outsiders.
Upcoming events I’m hosting:
Sunday, October 25: Chapters and Charcoal: A patio, good company, and dedicated reading + drawing time
Monday, November 2: Austin Reading Club: read a book of your choice and meet a couple dozen fellow readers. Solitary hobbies don’t have to be isolating.
NATURE SPOTLIGHT
Good news: there are some truly thriving ecological pockets in this world.
Bad news: one of them happens to be my hair.
Today we’re digging into a resurrected horror.
Lice, again
I’m now both intellectually and physically quite aware lice are prolific breeders.
During my delousing process last month, I was surprised to hear lice mark habitats with chemical signals that serve as beacons for other lice. Normally I’m a huge fan of collaboration.
But on Monday at 5:01pm, a group text lit up with the news of a close-proximity pal in extermination mode.
By 5:21pm, a second positive ID.
A third fell at 7:13pm, with photo evidence.
And my family was not immune to another round of nits.
Cue calling in Grandma, another spin with her diligent lice-comb-wielding, and sinking into the intimacy of domestic care work.
At the risk of toxically bright-siding this, my lice research blitz last month has me curious about the universal and inextricably historical experience of tending to this socially spread creature. What an honor to perpetuate this quintessential human experience, and to keep learning about it firsthand and secondhand and thirdhand.
So let’s glance at lice in the world prior to group texting:
The oldest known complete sentence in the Canaanite alphabet was found carved on a small ivory comb in Israel. It was a wish for that comb to remove lice from hair and beard
Archeologists are very familiar with lice combs—they span cultures and time, and were designed, sometimes with ornate detail, as daily instruments. One study of 24 combs from the Judean Desert found half still held lice, eggs, or both
Re: Biblical plagues, Exodus features Plague #3 in Egypt, and the Hebrew word kinnim is translated as lice, gnats, or sometimes mosquitoes or fleas. Any way you want to slice that, yikes
Also Egypt: the elite and priests went for full-body shaving as lice deterrents. Enter wigs
shared.image.missing_image
17th-18th century England also had a wig phase, and the lice-evasion was a perk from their bigger motivations: fashion and status, obviously, but also to mask the effects of rampant syphilis
Wigs were called perukes
This demand for wigs led to several side tasks, like maintaining shaven heads, and styling the wig’s human, horse, or goat hair with animal fats and starch
Powdering wigs had a benefit of absorbing natural scalp oil and masking the scent of decomposition and/or bodily sores
The wig fashion saw a hastened decline after 1795 when hair powder was heavily taxed and financially inaccessible for the general public
Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket had quite the year in 1170 England. His murder over religious privileges was given even more street credibility because his hidden penance hair shirt was teeming with lice. The monks interpreted this as evidence of his saintly self-mortification
Thanks to a critical mass of English majors in my VC firm, Robert Burns’s 1786 “To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church” is on my radar. It’s home to the phrase “to see oursels as ithers see us!”
Thanks to modern lice mitigation, ithers can see me + the members of this group text as very greasy, with a bottle of dish soap claiming a new spot in the shower lineup.
A different kind of resurrection
The TL;DR of where this next section is going: I want you to email me photos of your pet dressed in Halloween attire. In addition to your pet’s costumed photo, I need to know their name and hobbies. I will happily accept photos from Halloweens past.
The why involves human nature and the sometimes beneficial horror of not having a system to manage digital clutter.
During Deep Tech Week, I was reminded that when you host an event on Partiful and import guests via cell phone number, their names generate as they’re saved in your phone. Think Jay Lawn Guy, Aaron Chimpanzee, Luka’s mom.
In that same stretch of time, I had a few unrelated conversations with people who told me they’re ex-seminary.
Which triggered a vague memory of befriending a tourist family in 2010 during a summer I spent waitressing on Hilton Head Island. (Fun fact: I was technically a professional dancer, with the notable asterisk that the dance was the Hokey Pokey, and my outfit was a blank-staring dog suit.)
Field note: wearing a dog suit during a hot, humid summer on an island means the sweat doesn’t dry fully between wears
And I remembered this tourist family included someone considering seminary. And they were still saved in my phone as Tourist Seminary?. So I took it as a sign to text a totally normal “remember how I served your family peeled shrimp 16 years ago? What’d you do with your life?” text.
And they responded that they opened up a dog park with a bar and restaurant that offers doggy daycare and boarding.
And I knew I would need to find a way to lure in photos of dogs in costume.
And that time is now.
And that person with dog photos could be you.
Send costumed pet photos to [email protected] by Tuesday, October 27. There’s a 70% chance I’ll make these into a collage for the next newsletter.
UPCOMING EVENTS
🗓️ October 22: Bat Talk Series: always more to learn about bats
🗓️ October 22: Sourdough Workshop: Let me know what you’ve named your starter
🗓️ October 22: Movies on the Lake: Practical Magic: Is this where I admit I’ve never seen this movie?
🗓️ October 22–24: Trail of Terror: If you think high schoolers are scary
🗓️ October 23: Howl-O-Ween Dog Costume Contest: More events like this, please
🗓️ October 23: Mothing: you can borrow some of my pantry moths to take with you
🗓️ October 23: KUTX Rock the Park: teach the kids what’s up
🗓️ October 23: EMOWEEN with Anxious! At the Disco: don’t threaten me with a good time
🗓️ October 23–25: Fall Native Plant Sale: Plants!
🗓️ October 24: The Board Walks: loosen those thoughts
🗓️ October 24: Austin Ruck Club: do it for the bones
🗓️ October 24: Let’s Go Birding Together (LGBT) Bird Walk: couple of inclusive miles
🗓️ October 24: Tree ID Walk: with a seed saving side quest
🗓️ October 24: Patterson Park Community Garden Fall Festival: myths + art + mushrooms
🗓️ October 24: Staring at the Sun (Safely): Daytime stargazing, featuring sunspots and solar flares
🗓️ October 24: Nature Festival & Spooktacular: including tree climbing + a live butterfly release
🗓️ October 24: Guard the Oakwood Cemetery—-an option to volunteer for the Murder, Mayhem, and Misadventure Walking Tour
🗓️ October 24: Hunter’s Moon Night Hike: I’m hearing this pairs well with a bunch of planets in retrograde
🗓️ October 25: Chapters and Charcoal: I’m co-hosting this! Designated time to read and draw.
🗓️ October 25: Heirloom Fruit Class: help Texas make more fruit
🗓️ October 25: Frightlandia: Fortlandia, but make it spooky
🗓️ October 27: Hill Climbers Tuesday Ride: get rolling
🗓️ October 27: Ways of Seeing: Smartphone Photography Workshop: Make panorama progress
🗓️ October 27: Tuesday Twilights: limited time dog-friendliness
🗓️ October 28: Toddler Yoga: savasana sounds like a great idea
PUMPKIN-ADJACENT FUN
🎃 Texas Pumpkin Fest: there will be professional wrestling + pumpkin pie eating contests + a mechanical bull that is surely a chiropractor’s top of funnel
🎃 Indian Springs Ranch: Includes a pumpkin patch + exotic animals + a corn pit south of Austin
🎃 Pumpkin Nights: Explore immersive pumpkin lands in East Austin. It’s legit.
🎃 Sweet Berry Farm: Mazes, rides, and pumpkins with three exclamation marks in Marble Falls
🎃 Sweet Eats Fruit Farm: Pig races, apple cannons, wagon rides, and pumpkins with two exclamation marks in Georgetown
🎃 Mama Mary's Farm: What you’d expect from a pumpkin patch, this time in Creedmoor
🎃 Uhland Fall Fest: The parking’s on Dairy Road. Enough said.
PANTRY MOTH UPDATE
I wrote about my pantry moth infestation on June 25, 2026.
I’m aiming for at least 45 moth-free days before I reclaim my pantry.
That’s all for this week!
In the meantime, let’s consider a group text with wig recommendations.
-Nicole
OPTIONAL SIDE QUESTS
🪵 Need to metabolize something? I help people write. Let’s chat.
🪵 Shall we take this outside? Of course.
🪵 Are you sitting on a misogi-esque story? Spill.
🪵 Follow my calendar to know when we’re rallying.
🪵 Is this newsletter not your vibe? Forward it to your enemies to make them suffer too.
💰It’s safe to assume there are affiliate links, and I’ll monetarily benefit from any purchases you make. Hooray, capitalism! So far, this newsletter has generated $7.20 of cold hard cash. 💸