A while back I posted about our Turkeys. WELL. Apparently wild turkeys LOVE snow. b/c right now it’s coming down in droves, and there are (I kid you not) FORTY wild turkeys in our backyard. How great is that?!
But here’s the trip. John just went out and – as well as scattering seed, left a big bowl of food in the middle of the yard. After all, these turkeys daily gorge themselves at our overflowing feeders. You’d think they’d delve right into a bowl, right? HAHAHHAHAHAHH!!
Nature is FASCINATING. Especially for someone like me who loves food. Although I’ve never been daring enough to collect and consume wild mushrooms – mostly b/c I have no idea what I’m doing and would likely wind up dead or whacked out of my mind – I still enjoy discovering the abundance of fungi out there. Just look at this one I found in Vermont, which looks quite egg-y to me:
Or this one, also from VT, which resembles a giant puffy pancake.
My husband recently introduced me to this online program – a mushroom catalog, detailing which are edible and which lethal. I particularly like the little emoticon faces – from happy to ill, and worse.
I visit a local nature refuge several times a week. This fall has brought forth several remarkable mushrooms, each the size of a soccer ball. I was FLOORED the first time I saw one. WOW! Look at the SIZE OF THAT THING! Of course my husband and I – being the way we are – immediately grabbed one and began kicking it back and forth to each other. After a few kicks…BAM! it exploded, and we were left with large white chunks. We realized the whole mushroom had been solid, rather than hollow. It struck me as so remarkable that I decided to take a few photographs and do a little research.
When I got home, I googled “GIANT PUFFBALL” and Whaddaya know?! CHA-CHING! The Giant Puffball Mushroom, or Calvatia gigantea
Giant puffballs resemble the white button mushrooms you find in every supermarket, but are smooth solid white globes, lacking gills of any sort. The ones we’ve found have been no more than 12 inches in diameter, but puffballs can be as small as golf balls or as large as medicine balls – some weighing up to 40 POUNDS. The young, all-white mushrooms are edible and said to be quite tasty, w/ a flavor akin to tofu or melted cheese. For more detailed information on consuming giant puffballs, see the following RecipeTips entry.
As the Giant Puffballs age, they eventually split and turn yellow, and then brown, as they begin to spore. I found a specimen at Tinicum which had opened and begun the process.
Once they reach this stage, giants puffballs are INEDIBLE. (Not that anyone in their right mind would be interested in gobbling that mess up.. But still. I offer the warning.)
For more information on Giant Puffballs, check out the following websites:
Tom Volk’s entry w/ FUNNY PHOTOS is definitely worth a click.
Wikipedia entry on Calvatia gigantea
Wildman Steve Brill’s entry on the Giant Puffball
David Fischer’s American Mushrooms entry on BEST EDIBLE WILD MUSHROOMS: Giant Puffball
We have a large butterfly bush in our front yard which attracts a huge variety of insects. Butterflies (of course), as well as all types of bees, flies, – this year we even had a hummingbird! Pretty darn rare in the city. Anyway. b/c of the number of butterflies, this bush is also home to a large cadre of praying mantises. Mantids LOVE butterflies. Their tender juicy middles in particular. After gobbling them up, they drop the butterflies’ colorful but otherwise unappealing wings to the floor below. So all summer long, while I’m weeding the garden, my daughters are gathering up the wings like so many discarded petals.
When I was a kid I never saw a praying mantis. But I clearly remember people saying they were endangered, and telling me never to kill one. I believe it was illegal at the time (the 1980s), but I haven’t been able to confirm or deny that. All I know for certain is that mantids are thriving in 2008 – at least in our yard. If a postage-sized stamp of a garden in the middle of a city is any indication of the greater picture, I’d say they’re doing fine.
And yet each time we find a praying mantis, you’d think it was the very first time. We drop everything. Holla to each other. COME QUICK! B/c we all want to see. Their thoughtful eyes and slender grace are fascinating. My daughters found a small one several weeks ago – of all places, beneath a checkout in Trader Joes. They scooped him up, and carried him out of the store. He seemed happy to be free. But rather than hop off outside the exit, he rode for blocks on my older daughter’s hand. Only once we reached the Market Street bridge did he fly off, soaring stories into the sky.
We’ve been fortunate enough to capture several others over the years. Not in any box, but on film. My skillful husband took these photos a couple weeks ago of a pair mating, and I just had to share them. They are beautiful. The text is excerpted from the North Forty News. Many thanks for sharing.
PS: We now have a large egg case on one of the branches. Here’s to next year’s offspring!
This brings us to the delicate subject of mantid love – or, more precisely, mantid sexual behavior.
Slender adult male mantids, smaller than the female, usually feature brown tones in contrast to the female’s greens. They display rather slow, deliberate care around prospective mates, often approaching from the rear and leaping on the female’s ample back when close enough. Females warrant this caution, even though their substantial weight keeps them grounded while males can fly, because a female may hunger for a substantial meal more than sex.
Sometimes she wants both.
Even attached and fully engaged, a male may literally lose his head servicing his chosen female. The female can swivel her head in a disconcertingly human-like gesture and decapitate her suitor. This may not even interrupt the act at hand. One author states that “removal of the male’s head, the bit which the female eats first, releases the male’s genitalia from nervous inhibition from the brain and leads to incessant copulatory movements.”
The smartest–or the luckiest–males avoid this circumstance, however, leap off their temporarily groggy paramour and run quickly away. Such mortal danger may insure that only the smartest males live to mate again.
Once inseminated, a female searches for a plant stem or fence post suitable for making an egg case and laying her eggs. Usually she selects a location 1 to 4 feet off the ground and constructs a case that resembles tan foam with the texture of a roasted marshmallow. Chinese mantids build round cases; the Europeans flatten theirs on one side.