Mushroom Hunter

Day 22: Thinking I would be alone in the forest, I had tucked a perhaps-bag into my kit even without any significant expectations of finding dinner on ground I'd scoured only a few days earlier. In any event, I'd wanted to check the Mycena to see if it "bled" (it did not, putting my proposed identification in the bin), and I was going along, collecting spiderwebs and the occasional occupant on my face and clothing as I pushed through the brush, when the realization hit me that I was not alone. Another mushroom hunter was surveying my territory! With all due stealth, I knelt down behind a log and adjusted the camera for the dim light. I was going to catch the culprit in the act. I was surprised when my competitor ignored a perfectly good one-inch Boleta for a tiny translucent and exactly bite-sized micro-'shroom of indeterminate species. The process was fascinating to watch. Initially, Sluggo's eye-stalks were withdrawn (in fact, at a distance, I had mistaken him for a second small Boleta). Perhaps my footfalls had sent vibrations via the forest floor, alerting him to the presence of a potential predator, but as I waited motionless beside the log, his confidence grew and his eye-stalks lengthened. He began to creep slowly over the moss, and then as some slug-sense detected the tinier fungus, his head raised as if to say, "Oh, lunchtime!" Arching the forward portion of his body, he then "pounced" upon his quarry and consumed it in its entirety in a single protracted gulp. With the excitement over, we both moved on, the human to explore, the mushroom hunter to go in pursuit of an appropriate dessert.