Warts And All

Day 4: I have to admit that when I went out for my walk on Wednesday, this is what I was looking for: a textbook specimen of the most widely recognized mushroom in the world, Amanita muscaria. Its warty red cap graces the pages of illustrated children's stories, shows up in video games and cartoons, sets old hippies into thinking with some regret about their younger years and how they had no regard for their potential longevity at the time. Like other Amanitas, muscaria bears a toxin in its tissues, one which causes hallucination in the short term, organ damage over time because it is not excreted. It accumulates in the liver where, in the long run, it's likely to take a few days, weeks, months or years off a person's life. I could veer off on a tangent here to talk about how drug abuse may have led to our present political situation given that a large percentage of voters are of an age which suggests they might have indulged in experimentation during their early 20s, wreaking havoc not only on their organs but on their minds, but that's another story. Suffice to say that my love of Amanita muscaria, warts and all, lies exclusively with its potential as a natural-history subject and in its photogenic properties.