Spotted At Longmire

Day 343: Scowling darkly at the bare ground where last week my best specimen of Ramaria araiospora had glowed as red as any stoplight, I was silently wishing multiple forms of harm upon the unknown visitor who had plucked it from the earth. I cursed myself mentally for having posted the location on line, inviting a question someone else answered before I could deflect the inquiry: "Edible?" What sort of lowlife would pick and eat a specimen under study? Don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question. They're out there, and in far greater numbers than you imagine.

While not on the scale of illegal big-game hunting, harvesting anything not found in abundance is in my book a crime against nature and science. Worse, it sickens me to think that my inadvertent disclosure of the location led to the destruction of an example of an uncommon species. Now on guard, I will not make that mistake again, but the damage is already done.

To that faceless, nameless miscreant I offer this speckled beauty, spotted also at Longmire. Eat, and wander down the swirling, multicolored halls of hallucination to your heart's content, and when you reach mid-life and your kidneys and liver begin to fail before you've done half the things you wanted to do, remember I told you where to pick them.