I, the sometimes somewhat intrepid Nitrocat, am not afraid of bugs. After all, I live in Northern Illinois and not the Amazon Rainforest. I've been there, you know. They have two sizes of insects down there. They have the ones that are small enough to fit through the holes in the screen door, and the ones that are big enough to open the door for themselves and walk right in. There was a spider in the shower with me once with a body the size of a grapefruit. I didn't stay in the shower, but that's another story. After surviving the jungle, there isn't too much that worries me (Okay, I do confess being freaked out by ticks when I find them on my stomach, but come on!). The bugs here are laughable by comparison.
That being said, I found myself fleeing for my life while mowing our yard yesterday. There was a mutant dragonfly, which I initially mistook for a bird, that seemed extremely angry about something. It started chasing me and smacking into my head as I rounded one corner. On the next pass around, it hovered in front of the mower, looked me square in the eye, and by some extra sensory means, I could hear it lick it's lips. I decided to leave off mowing and find something in the house that needed urgent attention, like laundry. I could fix the swerving path in the grass later.
After some astute thinking, I have decided that the dragonfly must have eaten part of the mutant mushrooms in the yard. That would explain it monstrous size and ferocious nature. Now all I have to do is electrify some railroad tracks or design a gun that harnesses all of the sun's energy in order to destroy it. Well, at least that works in the Godzilla movies. In this case, a tennis racket might suffice.
This will be the last of our mutant mushroom pictures. I hope. I mowed them yesterday. It was very gratifying to see the ragged chunks spread all over the grass shrivelling in the sun. Unless the ominous black cloud that exploded from one of them when I ran over it means anything...
Past experience has taught me that the folks at the county extension office weren't going to be too successful at identifying the mushrooms overtaking my yard. They are nice people and try to be helpful, bless them, but I can thumb through antiquated books with a blank stare on my face with the best of them.So when some of the shrooms tripled in size overnight, the finding of information became a more pressing concern. Would the dog turn purple and swell up like a balloon if he sniffed one? Would the girls shrink and carry on conversations with caterpillars if they licked one? Then I found these lovely people over on the forum at http://www.mushroomexpert.com/ and quick as a wink they had several of my monsters identified. The whoppers above and the small, cottage cheese-like ones in the last post are both types of puffballs, and are edible. Cream of mushroom soup anyone? Me neither. But it is good to know that I don't have to worry about them. The others look like the common ones that you see growing in mulch and they are already drying up.The internet may have it's draw-backs, but I love how quickly you can find the information that you need on any given topic from British pipe fittings to the micrathena gracilis. Now you know you won't be able to sleep until you look that one up!
