Amanita Explain Myself

My cap has flattened with age.

The couples that pointed and blushed at what they thought my former beehive noggin on my stem made me look like now, for the most part, walk on by. How they would chuckle if they only knew my surname. Oh fine, it’s Phalloides.

If I had legs I would run over and kick their sickeningly clenched hands apart.

Like the one who tried to impress his date by calling me a puffball. I’d kick him in the nuts and then go and punch some puffballs themselves for good measure. Strange little smoky eggheads. The dog toys of the woods.

You’d be bitter too if you were stuck in the ground all day. Where we all end up. Not where we would all necessarily chose to start from.

Brief entertainment was had when a pigtailed girl still getting used to standing on two legs finally reached me. She seemed disappointed there was no dormouse using me as an umbrella, or pretentious caterpillar sitting on top of me. She called her mother over, who seemed wary of getting her Cath Kidston wellington boots muddy. Mum just grimaced and steered her little angel away. I heard a reminder issued to the progeny that their mission was blackberrying. I just hope they left enough for the birds. Their songs are the one noise to interrupt my calm that I can live with.

And there was that time a fortnight ago, the fungi foray, where I was briefly the star of the show. Until the one called John sniffed and called me common.

At least my surname isn’t ‘Smith’, is it, John.

My closest relationship is with this gnarly old oak tree who towers over me. Despite how much he protests it is just his naturally protective stance, it irks me. And did he say anything when that suspicious man with the rucksack and obscenely large lens extension on his camera came and pointed it at me for hours on end? No, he merely bristled. That’s all Tree’s good for. Very hard conversationalist. Rather wooden. Though the shade Tree offers is welcome. I do like it damp and dreary. That’s why when the lens man started flashing at me, I froze.

Freezing does not alter my powers, however. Or boiling. ‘Thermostatic’ I was called by the conservationist showing a group of mittened children around. The red-faced tykes stamped their feet to warm up and nearly crushed my neighbours, the Brittlegills, in the process.

This jolly Green bespectacled giant pointed at me with her pen (again, what is with all the pointing?) and drew the attention of her sniffling dwarven tribe to my olive complexion. She said I can also sometimes have a yellowish tinge. It’s true. It can happen when I drink too much. Or when Mrs Dawson, who lives on the farm to my east allows her Cockapoo to cock-a-leg up on me.

Excuse me a moment while I disperse some spores. It’s the closest I get to extreme sport, in my lowly position. I watched a scurry of squirrels chasing each other up and down and around Tree and his gang yesterday. The scamps mocking me with their acrobatics.

Who else has been by of late? Let me see. There was a studded-nosed forager who brushed up against me with fingers that were bedecked with inky scratchings – arrows and dots, some sort of primeval map perhaps? At least her grubbing skills were much more competent than her fleshy stylings. She gasped as she realised my tree nature and backed away, pulling from the pocket of her pantaloons one of those little bottles of cleansing water. You remember them, surely? They were all the rage about five years ago.

Hours pass. I fear I may decompose before my bearded photographer even has time to tweak his photos to remove the ant that was treating me as a hill. I get it – sometimes people are so distracted by the glimmering mass that they miss the tiny details crawling in front of them. The blemishes on my skirts and veils.

But look – along comes forager number two. Similarly blemished. Obviously doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. But enthusiasm doesn’t always signify intelligence.

See the wicker basket he is carrying, like he is performing some kind of gender-bending Little Red Riding Hood cosplay. Look at him filming his reels. Attention seeker. Although isn’t that what we all crave. Even I. Yes, I have many annoying visitors but life would be pretty dull without them. Watching Tree’s outfits change with the seasons. Envying all the winged creatures, particularly those tiny girls that dance merrily in the Scotch bonnet circle.

He bends closer, practically salivating over me. In these twilight years of mine, I may look resemble a grandma but I’m still a wolf underneath.

He grabs me around the waist with his pale clammy hands and I am pulled from my anchors. My mycelium, no longer mine. No more networking for me. Into the pot I go, into someone’s tea. My sweetness will rot much more than teeth.

In the aftermath my offspring will see a signpost constructed in my honour:

‘Death Cap mushrooms are known to grow in this area – DO NOT EAT’.

It will be accompanied by a cartoonish illustration – something for the parents to point to so they don’t yet have to explain the concept of death, something for the city-dwelling simpletons, something to rip the forest bather types from their mindfulness reveries. A wooden tombstone. Tree would approve. If I had my wishes he would donate his own body parts towards it. He was always saying he wished he could do more for me. While all the time neuronal networks of great complexity wove their way around his roots. Who’s holding who up?

I’ll be forgotten by Tree though when my clones begin to emerge. He’ll be through lamenting my lamellae as soon as shiny new heads burst through the soil. The photographer will come running again, to shoot my sisters.

There’s only one of you, but there are many of me.