New Forest, Hampshire
Fly Agaricus at New Forest
Now, with the dampness in the air and the rich, moist layer of dead leaves, this was the time of the fungi and they were everywhere in profusion. Their fantastic shapes were like a Martian world. They seemed endless in form and colour. Mushrooms as pink as sugar icing, mushrooms grey and silky as a seal, mushrooms curved upwards, showing their gills like the leaves of a book, others like umbrellas disembowelled by the wind, some like dainty summer parasols, some like Chinese hats, others crowded together like tables in front of a French cafe or bubbling like waterfalls from the bark of trees. There were some like complex pieces of coral or slivers of orange peel; the sulphur-tufts, yellow as canaries, the grisettes a rich foxy red; parasol mushrooms, pale caramel-coloured with scales on top like tiles on a roof, or the pholiota, pale brown with scales like fur.
Then there were the fascinating names they were called. the scientists who collect and classify fungi have obviously a strong poetic streak in them and have given them names like the Shaggy Ink Cap, or Lawyer's Wig, the Weeping Widow, the Penny Bun, Slippery Jack and Deyrads Saddle. Then lurking among the trees you will find the Varnished Death Cap and the ivory-white Destroying Angel, its uneven top looking like a tombstone angel's wings. The there were the huge, flat, plate-like beefsteak fungi, clamped so tightly to the tree trunks it was possible to sit on them as one would sit on a shooting-stick without breaking them off. There were the puffballs, round and soft, which, at the touch of a finger, would give off a puff of minute spores, a silent, mist-like explosion that would send future generations drifting across the forest floor like trails of smoke.
Badgers at New Forest
'You will be sitting outside a sett on the other side of the valley,' Jonathan explained, 'and then, just as it becomes dusk, the badgers will come out.'
'Have you told the badgers this?' I asked.
'They will come out,' Jonathan said confidently. 'They will come out for the sandwich.'
'Sandwich? What sandwich?' asked Lee.
'A peanut-butter sandwich,' said Jonathan.
'What are you talking about?' asked Lee.
'Badgers,' said Jonathan, with an air of authority, 'badgers find peanut-butter sandwiches irresistible. they will travel miles to obtain one. Drag a peanut-butter sandwich through the forest and you will have every badger for miles around following you.'
'Where did you obtain this esoteric piece of information?' I enquired.
'It sounds distinctly peculiar to me,' I said. 'I have never heard of attracting badgers with peanut butter.'
...
Dutifully I did my piece to camera and then threw the sandwich at the entrance to the sett. As on cue, both badgers approached it, they both sniffed the sandwich and then backed hurriedly away from it, sneezing violently and displaying every symptom of acute displeasure.