Shrooms

While running down by a nearby lake, I kept noticing clumps of fungi appearing, especially under the many white birches that have been growing along the lake for years. Under a particularly large and bowery birch, there are a good number of amanita muscaria popping up, those picturesque but toxic red-capped ones with white bumps all over the tops. They're the kind pictured in cute little garden statuary arrangements with elves and gnomes and fairies. Years ago a friend who was an amateur expert on psychedelic substances told us these fungi could bring on colorful hallucinations. There were several crows among the mushrooms, picking at them; could bring on some interesting avian behaviors.