This week Yves is asking us to go out into your own garden/city and find something bizarre/fantastical to photograph (if possible) and write about. It can be an animal, insect, person, building, food/beverage, festival etc.
Commotion
Chaos
Mayhem
Calls here and there
Confusion
Aliens?
Amongst the ferns I spied this monstrosity.
Red raw it seemed as if waiting.
Who would be fool enough to come close?
The brown ooze uninviting
The inflammation obvious
Would it pounce?
Was it waiting?
I wasn’t going to find out.
The spindly tentacles
Reached out to invite the gullible
They appeared to appeal
But their colour
Repulsive, we stepped back
Photographed it
Sought answers
Went to the nursery
‘No idea,’ said an expert gardener
‘But it looks like a fungus.’
Back home and there it was
A starfish fungus
As large as the palm of my hand
His sticky centre a death trap.
An hour later I went back
But he had begun to fade
Withering as the moments past.
Since then I have seen a few small ones
But this large fungus
With his flesh exposed
Remains my garden’s hidden
Occupant.
Except of course for the fernery fairies
Who stay well away
When a stinky sticky end is on the cards.
Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/photo-challenge-82-october-13-2015/
That thing looks evil! 😁
Thank you Richard thankfully it only lasts a short while and needs some wet humid weather to come out…
It was like something out of a horror show.
Spooky looking.
That is a creepy looking fungus isn’t it yikes! In NC they have star-nosed moles http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Egz2f5_Ip3U/maxresdefault.jpg
I was gardening and dug one of these bizarre little critters out by accident. They aren’t aggressive I mean it was a sweet little thing but they do look awfully peculiar.
Eek!
wow – it’s amazing the diversity of creatures, bits and bobs, blobs and goo and all kinds of stuff that exists on this incredible planet!
I’ve never seen anything like it – and all I can say is: if I accidentally stumbled across that in my gardening travels – I’d be spooked but curious 😉
Great write here – loved the flow and how it all just came together Michael 🙂
Thanks Pat, it freaked me out when I first saw it too…
it’s an Aseroe rubra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aseroe_rubra
it was the first native Australian fungus to be formally described, in 1800 when discovered in Tasmania 🙂
I didn’t know that….it was a native fungus…you are a font of information…
LOL Professor Google is handy sometimes 😉
But it definitely looks more sinister than that. I’d call it the Martian star marauder 😀
Really quite a disgusting looking thing, I understand why the fairies would stay clear!
Yes indeed….it looks confronting and was…..though to another fungus it probably looks stunningly beautiful
Well I would say to those fungi….enjoy 😊
That looks scary, and I can see why the fairies find it so uninviting!
Thanks Juls yes they have complained a few times but mainly about the smell the thing emits. They learnt long ago, the hard way, to avoid it.