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A jilted ex-lover in Stillwater is accused of going to his former flame's home, where he killed her pet snake and wrote "I loved you" with its blood. When police arrived at the ex-girlfriend's home, Jonathan Paul Utecht, 21, was standing outside with blood on his hands and told the woman, who was with the officers, "that she did not want to go inside the apartment and see what he had done," according to a criminal complaint. Utecht was charged today with felony counts of burglary and terroristic threats. His initial court appearance will be July 28. Police were alerted...

You can find all the porcini you want in your supermarket, but don't go looking for the mushroom's distant cousin, Spongiforma squarepantsii, because the newly discovered species can only be found in the rain forest of Borneo - so far. Dennis E. Desjardin, a world-roaming mycologist, has just identified, described and named the curious fungal blob that a team of colleagues brought to his laboratory at San Francisco State...

EUROPEANS may have used magic mushrooms to liven up religious rituals 6000 years ago. So suggests a cave mural in Spain, which may depict fungi with hallucinogenic properties - the oldest evidence of their use in Europe. The Selva Pascuala mural, in a cave near the town of Villar del Humo, is dominated by a bull. But it is a row of 13 small mushroom-like objects that interests Brian Akers at Pasco-Hernando Community College in New Port Richey, Florida, and Gaston Guzman at the Ecological Institute of Xalapa in Mexico. They believe that the objects are the fungi Psilocybe hispanica,...

Packing foam now entering the marketplace is engineered from mushrooms and agricultural wasteA new packing material that grows itself is now appearing in shipped products across the country. The composite of inedible agricultural waste and mushroom roots is called Mycobond™, and its manufacture requires just one eighth the energy and one tenth the carbon dioxide of traditional foam packing material. And unlike most foam substitutes, when no longer useful, it makes great compost in the garden. The technology was the brainchild of two former Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute undergraduates, Gavin McIntyre and Eben Bayer, who founded Ecovative Design of Green Island,...

MILAN Aug 29 (Reuters) - At least 18 mushroom-lovers have been killed in accidents while hunting for their favourite fungi in the mountains and forests of northern Italy. Mountain rescuers say eager mushroom seekers are abandoning safety procedures as they don camouflage and hunt in darkness to protect coveted troves, la Repubblica newspaper reported on Sunday. "There is too much carelessness. Too many people don't give a darn about the right rules and unfortunately this is the result," Gino Comelli, head of the Alpine rescue service in northwest Italy's Valle di Fassa, told the newspaper.

This .. I know is an odd question and I couldn't figure out exactly how or where to post it so-o-o "You Won"! 8) A lot of folks DO look upon squirrels as a pest but I kinda get a kick out of watching them. I have never seen a squirrel eat a back-yard mushroom .. until today! I don't know what kind of mushroom this would be but I guess that it is the typical, growing over buried, dead wood type that grows in forested areas. (my home is in a 'forest') I walked around looking for a 'dead...

Glowing nonstop in the Brazilian rain forest, the newfound mushroom Mycena luxaeterna (pictured both in daylight, top, and in the dark) is indeed a source of eternal light, as its Latin name--inspired by verses from Mozart's "Requiem"--implies. The tiny mushroom is one of 7 new species of glow-in-the-dark fungi found around the world, bringing the total known to 71, according to a study that appeared October 5 in the journal Mycologia. San Francisco State University's Dennis Desjardin and colleagues scouted for mushrooms during new moons, in rain forests so dark they often couldn't see their hands in front of their...

It's two inches long, grows on wood, and is shaped like a phallus. A new species of stinkhorn mushroom, Phallus drewesii, has been discovered on the African island of Sao Tome and graces the upcoming cover of the journal Mycologia. The mushroom is named after Robert Drewes, Curator of Herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences, and is described in the July/August issue by Professor Dennis Desjardin and Brian Perry of San Francisco State University. "It's a wonderful honor and great fun to have this phallus-shaped fungus named after me," says Drewes. "I have been immortalized in the scientific record."

The three, who live in Franklin Township, have been hospitalized with liver toxicity; one is in critical condition and may need a transplant. Bruce Ruck, director of drug information and professional education at the New Jersey Poison Control Center in Newark, identified the victims as a mother and her daughter and son-in-law, all Asian Indians. The mother is in critical condition and being evaluated for a liver transplant at University Hospital in Newark; the other two are at Princeton University Medical Center. "They picked and ate wild mushrooms and wound up with liver toxicity," Ruck said. Officials from the poison...

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico (AFP) - A more than 20-kilo (41-lb) mushroom has been picked in a forest in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, university The white mushroom, macrocybe titans, measured a towering 70 cm (27 in) tall, was found near Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, according to the Southern Border University Center.

Rally at Israeli consulate features pictures of Muslim flags flying over White HouseA New York rally by the Islamic Thinkers Society outside the Israeli consulate yesterday featured chants of "The mushroom cloud is on its way! The real holocaust is on its way!" The demonstration by the Queens-based group was monitored by the Investigative Project on Terrorism whose members noted signs including "Islam will Dominate" and a picture with an Islamic flag flying over the White House. The chants were in Arabic and translated by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, headed by Steve Emerson, a former reporter for CNN. Here...

Posted on Wed, May. 18, 2005 A Morel Caught In Red Tape MIKE HENDRICKS To remind us why some people call it mindless bureaucracy, here’s a little story about mushrooms. You’ve heard of morels, right? Joe Bryson and other vendors at City Market have been selling those springtime delicacies for years and no one has ever gotten sick from them — or so say people at the Kansas City Health Department. Still, this might have been the market’s last mushroom season. The Health Department has suddenly discovered a rule in the Kansas City Food Code. “They tell us,” Bryson told...

To the foolish Conservative Many days have passed and many hours spent thinking. And i have become all the more powerful. You read this and the puss in your mind boils, for you know that while you ridicule me I steal away your integrity. Because my thoughts ring true with your own, but you are afraid to believe such things, knowing full well the punishment for an itch. I have been greeted with snares and cold food. For what is different than me? Who could make the list? And what of your family? Do they eat with you, sleep with...

A 70-year-old woman died Monday and her husband and two friends were hospitalized after they ate poisonous "death cap" wild mushrooms collected in the Oakland hills, authorities said. The adult victims fell ill after ingesting the toxic Amanita phalloides mushrooms on Thanksgiving Day, said Sherri Willis, spokeswoman for the Alameda County public health department. Yu-Chin Lai died at 2:35 p.m. Monday at Highland Hospital in Oakland. An autopsy is scheduled for today at the Alameda County coroner's office. Lai's husband, Chin Chiang, 76, was released from a hospital over the weekend, said his daughter, a San Rafael woman who declined...

Swiss scientists have found what they say may be Europe's biggest mushroom - covering an area about the size of 35 football pitches. The fungus was discovered in a national park near the eastern town of Ofenpass, said the Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Countryside Research (WSL). Spanning 35 hectares (86 acres), the mostly underground fungus is believed to be 1,000 years old, the WSL added. The Honey Mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) is edible, but it can kill trees. "The majority of the fungus is an underground network that looks a bit like shoelaces," WSL's spokeswoman Muriel Bendel said. "The...

On our way back home from a family drive on 8/29/04 my wife and I noticed a peculiar mushroom cloud just east of our home in Wellington, UT. We ran into the house and brought our both of our digital cameras and started snapping pictures. Within 2 hours there were three different “explosions” resulting in mushroom clouds. We emailed a local news station; they looked into the pictures but to no avail. There were truck drivers parked at the gas station just down from our home, the drivers did not dare drive the road for fear of whatever was happening...

Chilean firm says new mushroom tastes like meat A Chilean mushroom company claims to have developed a mushroom that tastes exactly like meat. Funghi Chile Ltd says sales have tripled since launching the new mushroom which is being sold as a healthier alternative to meat. Chief executive Ricardo Sanches told Las Ultimas Noticias online: "If you try one of our mushrooms blindfolded you will never know if you ate real meat or not. It tastes 100% like meat. "Our mushrooms give you the pleasure of tasting meat without the fat or cholesterol of the real thing." At the moment the...

Badger badger badger badger . . . mushroom mushroom!

An ACT woman who made soup using wild mushrooms growing in her backyard had died after suffering death cap mushroom poisoning, health authorities confirmed yesterday. Canberra Hospital's director of clinical pharmacology and toxicology Nick Buckley believed it was only the second death cap mushroom related death in 10 years. Two other local people were also treated for mushroom poisoning this year but had recovered, Associate Professor Buckley said. Health Protection Service general manager John Woollard defended the health department's public education campaign in the wake of the 88-year-old woman's death about six weeks ago. Public warnings were issued in February...