Lauren Larson

1 week ago | texasmonthly.com | Lauren Larson

Before I visited the Brooks County Safety Rest Area, an hour and a half southwest of Corpus Christi, I looked it up on a bird tracking app. Although it’s a destination on the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, I was suspicious, chiefly because I couldn’t imagine a rest area being a destination for anything.

1 month ago | texasmonthly.com | Lauren Larson

Latin Name: Tursiops truncatusSize: Up to thirteen feet longHabitat: The Gulf Coast About 51,000 bottlenose dolphins—the most common species off the Texas coast—are frolicking in the northern Gulf as you read this. Occasionally, though, one of them ends up on land. The Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network, based in Galveston, responds to an average of 134 strandings per year.

1 month ago | texasmonthly.com | Lauren Larson

There are two kinds of gardeners. First we have the laissez-faire growers who prize plants that thrive when ignored. These are succulent people, well-adjusted and simple. Then there are the gardeners who kill a low-maintenance snake plant the week they get it, watering it twice daily until its roots turn into an earthy pudding and its leaves yellow and flop over.

2 months ago | texasmonthly.com | Lauren Larson

There are those who would pooh-pooh (or poo-poo, as it were) the concept of an art gallery in a bathroom. But on a recent Monday at a Buc-ee’s along Texas Highway 71 in Bastrop, numerous women found themselves in thrall to a glossy black horse whose portrait hung outside the women’s restroom. Undoubtedly still recovering from having watched Black Beauty at a formative age, they paused as they beelined for the stalls to lean in and read the small placard by the photo.

2 months ago | nationalgeographic.com | Lauren Larson

This story is part of the National Geographic 33. Long before he played Aquaman, rightful heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, actor Jason Momoa was an aqua boy. His interest formed at a young age. Born in Hawaii, Momoa spent much of his childhood in small-town Iowa, where he lived with his mother. But even landlocked, he was extremely invested in aquatic ecosystems, spending his high school years taking college-level marine biology classes.