A Fungus Among Us

Since poop and other disgusting things seem to be the theme of this week's Humor Me Blog Hop, thought I'd share my own ewww moments...

In any case,  here’s how my morning started.  Got up, made coffee, started watering the garden and noticed this in the front yard:

 

Gross, right?  I mean, it looks like dog puke.  But this is the 3^rd time I’ve found it in the front yard in 2 weeks…and I’m pretty sure I would have noticed a strange, sick dog wandering around the neighborhood.

Besides, it LOOKS like dog puke but it doesn’t clean up like dog puke.  And yes, as a matter of fact, I do consider myself a bit of an expert on cleaning up dog puke after the unfortunate Peek-A-Boo Decides To Sample Cat Litter incident of 2010.

But I digress.

I looked it up on the internet and guess what?

It’s a fungus, not at all harmful to plants or animals, commonly called Dog Vomit Fungus.

Dog Vomit Fungus.

GROSS.

You would think THAT would be the end of my fungus issues but noooo, then I went into the backyard and found a couple of mushrooms commonly called Stinky Penis Mushrooms.

And, no, I’m not making this up. They are also referred to as Stinkhorns but the Latin name for this thing is Phallus Impudicus of the Phallacae family. How do I know?  Because the first time we found them in the yard, Opie did a Google search on them and gleefully reported the common name to me.

On a disturbing and slightly related note, when he told me this, I thought he was kidding. So I rushed in and did a search of my own…only I was in such a hurry that I just typed Stinky Penis.

I would advise against this course of action as I didn't even open any of the links but  am still emotionally scarred from the descriptions.  And I'm pretty sure I’m now on a number of government watch lists.

In any case, here they are:

 

Anyway, the 2 worst things about Stinky Penis Mushrooms--other than their disturbing appearance--are:

1.      They STINK.  I kid you not, one of these mushrooms popped up near a pile of actual dog poo and there were more flies on the mushroom. 

2.      Getting rid of them means digging down into the ground and getting the “egg spore.”  You also need to look around and dig up any other egg spores so they don’t spread…and the egg spores actually look like eggs and when you dig them up, they pop open like some foul jack-in-the-box, oozing chunks of baby mushroom.
 

So, that's my morning...and I haven't even medicated the cat yet....thinking I might just go back to bed.