Rainy Days and Mondays....

"Rainy Days and Mondays" was a immensely popular song by Karen Carpenter back in the day. In it she sand of how rainy days and Mondays always got her down..made her sort of depressed. I always loved listening to the Carpenters (Richard and Karen) sing but I have to disagree with the lyrics of this song. I love rainy days and..well, Mondays are not so bad either! It is a good thing that I do as today was a rainy Monday! Here lately, it has been raining every day. Things are getting a mite soggy but I still refuse to complain. After enduring such a long period of drought, the rainy season is so welcome. The yard is green, the garden is lush and the mushrooms are doing well. Mushrooms? Not the kind you eat..or at least I would not attempt to eat them..but the sort that pop up everywhere when things are wet. These things are fascinating!

I decided that photographing mushrooms is a lot easier than most wildlife. Mushrooms sit still and have no problem posing for the camera! So, today, I took set out to look for fungi! As I wandered about the yard, I began to notice that a lot of the mushrooms were missing pieces. Something was munching the mushrooms..feasting on fungi..tasting the toadstools! Some only had a slight nip taken out of the top while others were half-eaten. Many were just uprooted. I wondered what was making a meal out of mushrooms. Then as if to answer my question, a gray squirrel scampered down the oak tree. He ran directly to a large reddish-brown mushroom and set to work to uproot it. This was a large mushroom! After finally getting it out of the ground, he tugged and pulled it over to the oak tree. Now came the problem! He could not pick up the mushroom as it was far to unwieldy. He tried tugging it up the tree backwards..not an easy task there! Poor little fellow..he thought he would be set for the evening with his mushroom but it was too large. He finally abandoned the task and went in search of a much smaller meal.

I did find some lovely neon-yellow jellies on some old pier boards. These are usually found growing on old logs and have been called Witches' Butter by some of the "Old Timers" around here. I have been told that these are "not exactly poisonous" which I take as "you are going to get sick if you eat them." Not that I would really want to eat something that is gooey to the touch like these are. They are rather pretty..sort of remind me of little, bright yellow aliens!