Multiple Choice

The image above is:

a) a figment of my imagination

b) a leftover Halloween decoration

c) Yellow stinkhorn

Of course, the correct answer is a) a figment of my imagination.

Just kidding.

This is, as far as I can tell, Mutinus canenus, or yellow stinkhorn. I looked this same information up last year when the same weird fungus popped up in the same place in my yard. It looks for all the world like a dirty orange finger poking out of the ground. With a black fingernail and some nasty looking stuff on it, as well. (We won't go there.)

If I had been quicker, you could have seen this as it looks when it first comes up. But by today when I walked out to the mailbox, it had fallen over--you can tell on the right side where it broke. I identified it through this site--they have better pictures, too-- so I hope that even though I'm not in New Zealand, it is correct. The growing conditions sure matched--comes up in wood chips after rain. Yup--exactly--we had a huge rain the other day and up pops this ugly carroty finger out of the wood chip mulch by the mailbox. Last year was the first time I'd ever seen one and I just think it's interesting and strange.

There are a lot of things like that out there. Things we have never seen or even heard of, then suddenly, you go out to get the mail and there's something strange and weird and new right in your own little corner of the world. Like this, this was really weird--years ago one of my cats developed a sore on the side of her little body. Nothing much at first, but it got bigger so one night I got out the cat meds and plunked her on the kitchen counter to take care of it. On close inspection, it was an open sore about the size of a pea, but looked clean and not infected. I squeezed it gently to see if it hurt or was seeping.

A head popped out of the hole. I kid you not--a head.

After I finished gagging and making 'ewwww' sounds, I looked again, squeezed again. There was that head again. This time I identified it. A grubworm. Yuck, oh so many yucks. The yuckiest.

Here's what can happen, according to the vet we saw the following day. Really very simple--an animal swallows a grubworm whole; the grubworm eats his way to freedom. Can't blame him, really, but how strange! It apparently doesn't concern or hurt the animal at all and they just go about their business with a grubworm hanging out their side. Or wherever. The vet said he had only seen it one other time with a pet raccoon who had one coming out his eye. So things, as they say, can always get worse.

But all in all, I was priviledged to see it, considering how rare it is. And I feel that way about my stinkhorn, too.

William Styron died a couple weeks ago, and it seemed as if the world hardly noticed. I didn't see any of the usual short bios on network news, and only a small article on the second or third page of the local paper. The following week it was in a couple of the news magazines we get.

According to Styron, "A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it." His books lived up to that and more. I fell in love with his writing while reading "The Confessions of Nat Turner", backtracked to read his previous ones and then waited and waited for the next ones. His books were few and far between, but I'll miss that anticipation and I regret knowing there will be no others.

Meanwhile, the ones he did write are sitting there on my bookshelf like old friends. And like old friends, they maintain the power to make me laugh, or cry, or gasp at the wonder of their words. They will be re-read, new favorite passages noted, old ones savored.