Country Walk #296

I seem to have a certain penchant for finding naughty bits in nature.

I don't go looking for them, they find me.

Who remembers this little puppy that popped up in my backyard a few years back? This is a real mushroom, as in, it occurred naturally, as in, I didn't go to the local nursery and say, "Hey, that looks like a really fungi."

Sorry.

I think Mother Nature must have popped another kind of mushroom on the day she created this one. Then she probably sat around eating brownies and said to herself, hey, why not  rectangular pupils for goats and octopuses, and a Bombardier beetle, which shoots boiling hydrogen peroxide out of its bottom.

Both true statements. The second part. The brownie part is pure speculation.

Here it is, all dressed up in its lace collar and ready to get its sexy on for Elizabethan Night at the local club with his friend Ben Dover.

Sorry.

You can go HERE if you'd like a refresher. I don't know what it says about you lot, but a post about a penis-shaped mushroom generated the most comments ever.

I thought that would be the end of body parts lurking in the woods, but as I frolicked amongst the fall leaves a few weeks ago, I came across, well, a photograph says it best.

You be the judge. Also, really Mother Nature?

So it actually could be worse

A friend sent a photo to me after reading about my backyard mushroom trauma. These are growing at the side of her house. Note I said "these" because there are dozens of them. It's a different variety of stinkhorn than the one that showed up in my yard, a variety with the unfortunate but clearly apt name of Mutinus Caninus or Dog Stinkhorn.

She lives only a few blocks away.

I am afraid.

Very afraid.

It's like Mushroom Armageddon around here.

Mother Nature is messing with my head

Okay, first I have to tell you if you are easily offended, or if you are at work or you have small children about, then this is not the post for you.

Don't say I didn't warn you. (And I apologize for the quality of the photos. I don't have my trusty Nikon with me, so I had to use my Canon Sureshot.)

Remember, I am only reporting what I found lurking in my yard, so don't be hatin'. I didn't create this thing, Mother Nature did, and I think she is must be going through some kind of existential crisis and chose my backyard to express her angst. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say this thing is freaky. It also explains why my lawn-care guys were giggling and calling their buddies parked out front in the truck to come have a look.

My morning started out innocently enough. I was picking up "Buddy bombs" in the yard, and I saw Henry peeking through the fence. I love photographing Henry because he's a big goofy retriever with a wise old face.

Here is Henry at the fence:

But what is that white thing on the ground in the shade of the forsythia, down in the left corner? I moved in for a closer look, as did Buddy. He seemed a tad wary.

Now, I'm no fungi expert, but Holy Mother of all Mushrooms....this is what I saw growing at my feet:

Seriously. It looks like Sir Walter Raleigh on his way to a fetish party, his manhood embellished with an Elizabethan ruffle which is clearly tied too tight.

And if the sight of this thing wasn't bad enough, it had a smell that could knock you over from twenty feet away. How to describe the stench? I guess if you took a dead body, stuffed it with moldy mushrooms and unwashed gym socks, let it stew for a few weeks in warm sea water then sprinkled it with acetone you might come close. Buddy then whacked it over with his tail.

To avoid any accidental poisoning, I stuck the thing up in my flower box. The next day, the stench was worse than ever, and it was coated in giant flies which had already devoured the brown coating on the....head, I guess you could say. I placed a ruler beside it, and as you can see, this thing is a full eight inches. (I'm not touching that one, I'm not going there, I will not make a joke, I will not.)

If anyone could tell me exactly what this is, and if it's poisonous, I'd really appreciate it. I tried Googling it, but the entries that popped up when I put "mushroom + penis shape" are probably best left to your imagination.