So the Apocalypse bit is a little extreme. Although, if one were to find something looking like what we saw in the garden while planting tomatoes and peppers (more on them later.) one would be forgiven for grilling the neighbors endlessly on both the daily eating habits and nightly wandering rituals of each respective homeowner's familial canines. It would be forgiven because it is the most obvious place to find an explanation for the large piles of dog's vomit appearing around our property.
It turns out it's actually Dog's Vomit Fungus.
And, surprise, it's not a fungus. It's a slime mold. It has no cell walls, it's more like one enormous cell with thousands of nuclei (think thousands of ball bearings full of DNA sloshing about in a puddle of yellow jell-o). So it looks like a fungus, but on a cellular level it's more like an animal (similar, but not identical, to the basic odor and appearance of some entities known to frequent questionable bars and dancehouses the world over).
And it moves! It slowly creeps like an Amoeba and consumes mulch by phagocytosis (one of my favorite not-a-dirty-words). Slime molds are thought to be the among the very first multi-cellular organisms, formed when amoeba-like things just started working together (Something like the loose confederation of states that became the great US of A. They're all critters in their own right, but glom them all together, convince them to move in approximately the same direction and suddenly the aggregate entity is slithering across mulch beds annexing Poland [ed. note- many apologies for that last sentence. It may be the most mixed metaphor in the history of metaphors.]) The Dog's Vomit starts out yellow and squishy, slowly hardens and then does the one thing that REALLY caught our eye.
It BLEEDS!
The breakdown of the fruiting body results in a reddish, thick liquid. It's hard to tell in the picture, but the blood spots aren't static. They ooze slowly. It really is as if this large pile of throwup is bleeding. Somewhat unsettling when you're just trying to decide where to put all your tomato starts. I must admit I walked by several times, picked up my cell phone to call Torchwood, realized that that organization was both in Wales and fictional (not to mention concerned with alien rift beings, not possibly injured not-really-fungi that resembles dog sputum, and I don't really know the number) and wandered off to water something.
It kept haunting me all afternoon. What if this was a creature from the depths of space, plopped down beside my sadly unplanted hardy kiwis and happily growing black elderberry quietly bleeding to death while sending out telepathic screams for help over the Ham Radio bands? What if I was screwing up first contact due to my lack of compassion/telepathic Ham Radio? Then I remembered, I've seen these before, I'll see them again and while they might be time travelers, they did it the old fashioned way. One day at a time from the depths of the deep past and into the future. Just like Sharks and Coelacanth and John McCain, unchanged for millenia.
In any case, it's amazing the things you see when you're trying to get stuff to grow in suburbia. More to come as we tackle the new tomatoes, pick the crucifers and forage all over this crazy town. And don't worry, foraging in this case means berries, not copper pipes from abandoned new construction, but don't think I haven't thought of it.
Ryan
It turns out it's actually Dog's Vomit Fungus.
And, surprise, it's not a fungus. It's a slime mold. It has no cell walls, it's more like one enormous cell with thousands of nuclei (think thousands of ball bearings full of DNA sloshing about in a puddle of yellow jell-o). So it looks like a fungus, but on a cellular level it's more like an animal (similar, but not identical, to the basic odor and appearance of some entities known to frequent questionable bars and dancehouses the world over).
And it moves! It slowly creeps like an Amoeba and consumes mulch by phagocytosis (one of my favorite not-a-dirty-words). Slime molds are thought to be the among the very first multi-cellular organisms, formed when amoeba-like things just started working together (Something like the loose confederation of states that became the great US of A. They're all critters in their own right, but glom them all together, convince them to move in approximately the same direction and suddenly the aggregate entity is slithering across mulch beds annexing Poland [ed. note- many apologies for that last sentence. It may be the most mixed metaphor in the history of metaphors.]) The Dog's Vomit starts out yellow and squishy, slowly hardens and then does the one thing that REALLY caught our eye.
It BLEEDS!
The breakdown of the fruiting body results in a reddish, thick liquid. It's hard to tell in the picture, but the blood spots aren't static. They ooze slowly. It really is as if this large pile of throwup is bleeding. Somewhat unsettling when you're just trying to decide where to put all your tomato starts. I must admit I walked by several times, picked up my cell phone to call Torchwood, realized that that organization was both in Wales and fictional (not to mention concerned with alien rift beings, not possibly injured not-really-fungi that resembles dog sputum, and I don't really know the number) and wandered off to water something.
It kept haunting me all afternoon. What if this was a creature from the depths of space, plopped down beside my sadly unplanted hardy kiwis and happily growing black elderberry quietly bleeding to death while sending out telepathic screams for help over the Ham Radio bands? What if I was screwing up first contact due to my lack of compassion/telepathic Ham Radio? Then I remembered, I've seen these before, I'll see them again and while they might be time travelers, they did it the old fashioned way. One day at a time from the depths of the deep past and into the future. Just like Sharks and Coelacanth and John McCain, unchanged for millenia.In any case, it's amazing the things you see when you're trying to get stuff to grow in suburbia. More to come as we tackle the new tomatoes, pick the crucifers and forage all over this crazy town. And don't worry, foraging in this case means berries, not copper pipes from abandoned new construction, but don't think I haven't thought of it.
Ryan