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| NOT edible! |
Editor's note: when we last left Regina, she had just eaten part of a Death Cap Mushroom. Today we find out if she lived to tell the tale....
For Tea-Partyin' Gardeners Who Wanna Kick It Up a Notch.
by R. DeAngelo
Continued from Dispatch 2: Near Death in the White Mountains.
"Until you can tell a frog from a toad, don't catch your own frogs for dinner." -- David Fischer and Alan E. Bessette, Edible Wild Mushrooms of North America, 1992
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| Not for eating! |
"Amanita pantherina var. pantherinoides.
Location: North America
Edibility: Deadly.
Fungus colour: Yellow, Grey to beige
Normal size: 5-15cm
Cap type: Convex to shield shaped..."
I had just bitten into and swallowed two bites of this mushroom.
"Well," I said to my husband, after a terrible pause, "Tell everyone I died happy."
My husband reached across the table and slid my laptop over to face him. He read the description on the mushroom site again, silently. Then he read aloud.
"...three to ten centimeters across, convex to flat with a faintly lined margin; yellow-brown on disc, more honey yellow elsewhere; smooth, sticky when moist...
Honey."
.... Honey?"
I must have looked pale.
"Oh, honey. It's ok. I really don't think you're going to die... look. Look at this mushroom. It's dry. Was it sticky when you picked it?
"Nnno..."
Look at the color. This is white with a brown center. And look at the stem. No volva at all. See?"
"Hhmnmm."
"Also, honey? We don't live in the Pacific Northwest."
He slid the laptop back across the table to me.
"And you're the one who hollers at me for eating before identifying."
OK, so I'm not going to die. But tell me, wouldn't death by poison mushroom be a most glamorous and erudite departure? So you vomit for 36 hours and bleed through your cheeks while your liver shuts down and then you blow up like a catfish in Corexit. Irrelevant! What matters is how it looks in the Times obits. Should you be famous or wealthy enough to make the obits of the New York Times.
Which makes me think of the New York Times "Weddings/Celebrations" section, which reminds me of an old friend, a middle-aged unmarried fellow who at age 46 decided to buy a spot in this section, announcing sacred union with his dog Bernice. Here is how his announcement went:
"BB/Mike.
"Bernice, the golden retriever/beagle/dachsund/terrier mix, a daughter of Sheba and Lucky, was married Saturday to Mike, son of Mike Sr. and Trish. The Rev. Sri Melody-Bird Shanti OM, a Church-of-the Hypertext minister, performed the ceremony at the Russian-Ukrainian Benevolent Association Hall in the Fishtown section of Northeast Philadelphia.
The bride, 4, is known as BB, and sometimes Bad!. She recently completed her second week of Good Girl training at the Fishtown Community Center's Canine Obedience class in Philadelphia. She also recently served as a therapy dog with a mobile health clinic in the Laikipia district of Kenya for Save the Children.
Her mother gave birth to three healthy litters. Her father was put down last year after a short illness and long service as companion to the late Eddie from 5th Street.
The bridegroom, 46, celebrates his twenty-third year of middle management at Behemoth Financial. He graduated from a state institution of higher education in one of the square states.
His mother is a member of the Rosary Society of Port Whitefish Church. His father is a resident of the St. Ignatius-in-the-Hood Nursing Home in North Philadelphia.
Mike never did get the Times to run his announcement. He is now living with a female biped in New York City. I never made it to the Times obits, either; I mean, not yet at least. My ambition is to sneak my pre-written obituary into the Obits database at the NY Times, so that when I die, their software will automatically match my name with that found in the Charlestown Press, pull my bio and run it verbatim. Now, what should I die of? Ah, yes. Of course: the deadly Amanita Pantherina.