FAKE-BRANCH HEADWEAR

$19.95 plus shipping and handling from Cabela's, 1 Cabela Dr., Sidney, NE 69160, phone: 800-237-4444, fax: 800-496-6329, Internet: www.cabelas.com; item name: Permaleaf Camouflage.

As you know, hunters are obsessed with the idea of looking as much as humanly possible like giant, gun-carrying plants. This enables them to sneak up on the quarry unobserved. (Bear in mind that the quarry generally has a brain the size of an acorn.)

In their quest to vegetate themselves, hunters are constantly coming up with innovative new concepts in camouflage. The one that caught our eye this year, here at the Gift Guide, is the new Permaleaf camouflage, which is plastic faux leaves and branches on a wire, which you wrap around your head, thus transforming yourself into a creature from a 1958 horror movie about the dangers of atomic testing (''IT WAS HALF HUMAN, HALF SHRUB!'').

But this item is not just for the hunter on your holiday list. This is for anybody who wants to look more like a tree, or who simply needs ''a little space.'' Because trust us, when you are walking down the street with your head encased in fake branches, people are going to leave you alone. Birds are another story.