The Pier is Growing Hair!

  Several years ago, I found what I thought was a big tuft of black hair tucked way up under an azalea bush.  My heart sank as it was exactly the same color and texture of that of our sweet cat, Ms. Nycto.  I fretted that my poor baby had met her demise by some evil doer.  You will never know the relief I felt when Son investigated and assured me that it was not Ms. Nycto at all but rather a type of fungus.  It seems that Phycomyces Nitens grows on animal feces and does indeed look like fur.  It is easy to confuse the two when in the dark undergrowth of an azalea bush.

  Now I find there is another fungus, Phycomyces Blakesleeanus, that loves to grow on poop.  In fact, there are a whole bunch of poop-loving fungi out there!  Son, always on the lookout for interesting photography subjects for me, recently called me to the pier.  "There is a fluffy down here."  I was not sure what a fluffy was so I grabbed the camera and headed that way.  Sure enough, there was a fluffy.  In fact, there were several fluffies.  I knew that the otters have been leaving "evidence" on our pier but had not idea that it would sprout a full toupee!  This fuzz was not black like the previous stuff we had found but was rather a glistening white.  Each strand was topped with a small spore sac just waiting to pop open and reproduce!  

  I have to admit that I spent far too much time photographing otter scat with and without its hairy toupee.  Son and I had quite the conversation about the stuff which proved that mother/son bonding time can be important and that sons never really outgrow such things as talking about poop.  With the previous finding of black fuzz, he and I pondered over this "cure" for baldness...that topic came up again...of course.

Just add a little cinnamon!

  This has to be one of the wettest summers on record for the Bayou and surrounding area. Most years, we are in a full drought during late summer/early fall.  The plants are usually withered and dried.  By this time, leaves are usually falling from trees due to the lack of moisture.  The fire hazard rate is high and heat is stifling.  Not this year, however.  It has rained nigh on every day for the past several months.  Hard rains...inches of water is being dropped each day.  The place is beginning to look more like a rain forest than a marshy bayou!  Not that I am complaining, though, as I love this type of weather.

  Just to show how wet our hillside is, I found that the ground, itself, has grown mold!  Lovely fluffs of white mold can be spotted every few feet of any hike about the hillside.  Whether there is some other stuff beneath this mold remains to be seen.  I have not yet felt inclined to topple one to find out just what the mold is covering.  For all I know it may be dog poop! Nope!  Not going there!  The white mold can just keep on doing what it is supposed to be doing and I will admire it from a distance.  It is rather an attractive thing if you can get past it being mold.  It sort of resembles some miniature fluffy, white pup....if you have a great imagination...or really bad eyesight.  I have both.

  I was given the following bit of advice on "yard mold removal".  It seems that some folks find this stuff repulsive and wish to go around decimating each little fluffy "pup" of mold.  This is not for me.  The rain will merely replace the fluffs in a few hours regardless of my efforts.  But!  The advice is something that I would try if I was so inclined.  "Sprinkle the affected area with a heaping coat of cinnamon!"  Nice! Could you imagine how nice the yard would smell if I covered the ground of 8 acres with cinnamon!  Hey, it is fall, you know, and pumpkin pie spice does have cinnamon in it....sooo...just saying.  Still, I think I will forgo buying a half ton of cinnamon to eradicate the mold.  It can keep growing and, at the rate it does cover the ground, it will soon appear that we have an early winter complete with snow!  Even though, snow rarely is seen this far down in the Deep South!  So, go ahead and feel free to mold the ground, Little White Fluffs!  I do not have enough cinnamon on hand so don't you worry your little fluff about it!



 

Mossy Paths and the Wiggletail Search

  I try not to complain because I like rain.  I really do.  I like the way the earth smells fresh and clean after a thunderstorm.  I like the thunder, the lightning and winds.  Stormy weather stirs me to the bone but occasionally, one has to say "Enough is enough!"  Our persimmon seed weather forecasting predicted a wetter than usual winter and, so far, the seeds have been correct.  We have had so much rain that things are getting a tad soggy about the Bayou.  Living high on a hillside, rain waters do not present a flooding problem but due to the constant moisture (from rains and pea-soup thick fog), nothing is drying.  If this keeps up, we will all have to be extra diligent in emptying any standing water.  Mosquito larvae will have a happy time but, I guarantee, the rest of us will not.  With the warmer weather, this thought occurred to me, today.  I need to start checking flower pots and birdbaths for those little wiggletails!

    Wiggletails!  Now, there is a fine name for you.  Wiggletails are what we grew up calling mosquito larvae.  The tiny wiggly things that can be found in any bucket of water seemingly moments after a rainstorm!  It never ceases to amaze me just how quickly mosquito eggs hatch into those weird looking larvae that so violently kick about in standing water.  Let any wee puddle sit more than a day and suddenly it was filled with the larvae.  The tiny, almost worm-looking larvae move about the water with a tail-jerking action..hence the name wiggletails.  Pop told us to make sure we emptied any buckets so the wiggletails did not "hatch" into mosquitoes.   The name stuck as did the idea behind the emptying.

  But the rains have not only supplied us with potential mosquito nurseries, it also has made trekking about the hillside a tad treacherous.  The board paths have become covered with molds and mosses that are as slippery as a greased pig.  Several times in the past few weeks, I have come close to sliding down the hillside on my rump!  The board paths are to be avoided until drier weather!  I can remember my grandmother going out with a bucket of bleach water and a scrub brush to swab down her front steps.  At the time, I thought that she did not like the way the molds and mosses made her steps green.  (Personally, I thought it was a lovely shade of green and was almost perturbed to see her scraping away at the moss!)  Now, I think she probably had a great idea.  Still, being the lackadaisical person I am, I shall wait until the weather dries and the mold and moss disappears on its own.  In the meantime, I shall take a different path and hunt for wiggletails.

Even Our Fungus has a Fungus!

  This has been the rainiest summer that we have had here on the Bayou in many years.  I cannot recall that in recent (and not so recent even) years ever seeing so much water pour from the sky.  Not that I am complaining....I like the rain.  It keeps me from having to water the garden as often and gives me the opportunity to work on artwork.  But, the rains are plentiful and with those rains (and the Deep South heat) comes....mushrooms!  Lots of mushrooms!  

  This morning, Mark and I took a hike to the pier.  It was another cloudy...soon to be rainy...sky above us.  We stayed just long enough to watch a rainstorm move slightly to the west of us before we headed back up the hill.  One thing we have learned about all of this rain, is that the board path stays slippery.  Our walks are much safer stepping in the soggy grass than on the almost slimy boards.  It is along that grass slope where mushrooms have sprouted in abundance.  Some of the most common are some type of orange, thick bodied mushrooms. Squirrels seem to love these things so at least they are good for something other than decorating the lawn.  

   When we were about halfway up the hill, I noticed that our usually dark orange mushrooms were sporting lovely white fur jackets.  Ok, so that needed to be investigated!  On closer inspection, I realized that our mushrooms were covered in a mold.  Mycelium had overtaken a whole group of mushrooms and gave them all fur caps even though I am not sure that the mushrooms were appreciative of the efforts.  Mycelium is a parasite on a good many wild mushrooms.  It starts and can completely cover a surface in a matter of hours.  The stuff causes soft rot and will soon consume the entire mushroom. Poor little fungi, they never had a chance!

  While it is probably not the nicest thing to have growing in the yard, I find it rather pretty, in a weird sort of way, and quite interesting.  We have fungus growing on our fungus!  Amazing!  Hot, rainy days do make for unusual finds on the Bayou.

Its a Hairy Situation!..or..A Cure For Baldness?

  Since Son was busy doing some home repair projects, I decided to do a bit of "stick gathering".  Stick gathering, for those who do not know, is the fine art of picking up twigs for fire starters in the old cast iron woodstoves.  It only takes a handful to bring a blazing fire to life and warm the house.  I knew it was going to be quite chilly again tonight, so the stick gathering was of high importance.  It is one of those chores that I actually like doing as it gets me outdoors.  I happily took my basket out to the north side of the house and started breaking small limbs into smaller pieces.  I had filled the basket about half way when I noticed what appeared to be a dead critter of some sort.  A quite large tuft of black hair was half hidden beneath an azalea bush.  Ok, I have two black cats. One, who is pushing twenty years of age.  While she is quite savvy about being outdoors, her age might prove to be her undoing if she encounters a larger critter.  The other cat, while younger and MUCH larger, is not as bright when it comes to defending herself.  Both points caused me a bit of worry.  I had to investigate this hairy situation even though the outcome might not be to my liking.

  I pulled aside the lower limbs of the bush and peered into the dim abyss.  Ok...that sure did look a lot like the younger cat's fur or at least a good size wad of it.  Each hair was about four to five inches long...just like hers.  (The older cat, Ms. Put, is a short-haired feline.)  My heart sank a bit.  The younger cat, Ms. Nycto, has become "my" cat.  She has sort of attached herself to me.  Losing her would be saddening, to say the least.

  I gingerly reached down and touched the fur.  Hmmm..there was no warmth.  My poor Nycto....my brain was reeling about that time.  I gave a bit of a tug on the "hair".  Nope, it was firmly "planted" on something. Ok...I needed to just be brave and take a gander at that black fur ball. Just as I was getting down on  my knees to investigate further, Son came up behind me.  "What's up?"  I pointed at the black blob...."Is that Nycto?", I asked.   I am proud to say that Son handled it from there.  He started poking at the hair, tugging at it and even dug around it.  "Nope." he said...."Not her."

  At that point, we could not decide just what that the "fur" was.  It was hard to say for sure that it was not at one time attached to an animal or if this was some sort of weird plant.  Part of it was buried beneath the soil like roots but could have been where a critter had been buried.  As far as we could see, there were no bones....just the black fur.  What was this thing??

  I took some photographs (naturally!) and decided to research this since it was neither of my cats (thank goodness!).  After about an hour, I think I stumbled upon the answer.  It is a mold!  Phycomyces Nitens to be exact.  The mold seems fond of growing on critter droppings.  Well, that seemed logical since a rabbit has been seen under this azalea almost daily.

  Another question popped into my brain as soon as I discovered that this was a mold...could it be bad for our health?  After all, Son and I were both touching this mess of furry fungi.  I read a bit more and have decided that if we did not breathe it or eat it, we should be fine.  Well, that settles that!  Like I said earlier....I am just so thankful that both of my cats are fine!  Fur or not...you have to admit that this is one weird find!

**After I wrote this, I told Son about my findings.  My "man of few words" said "We could make growing-wigs."  Aha! There we go!  We are geniuses!  Make a lotion out of critter poop, add a few spores and we have just invented "Grow Your Own Toupee"...a long awaited cure for baldness!  Yep, you just never know what weird and wonderful things are found on the Bayou...or in this case...on rabbit poop.