When it comes to the strange and varied things that flourish and thrive in the moist climate of the Pacific Northwest, slime molds and mushrooms reside in that weird peripheral zone bordering between plant and animal life, crawling and climbing out of the dark, dank corners and often seeming to pop up overnight. When shown in sped-up time-lapse videos, you can see slime molds pulsating and reaching out in their relentless quest to consume any tasty microorganisms crawling on the grasses, plants, and other surfaces populating the terrain. While it's easy to assume that slime molds might be fungi, they are in fact amoeba, so they are separate from those cap-sporting cohorts you might spot nearby while out in the garden.
Antho is fascinated by slime molds, perhaps in large part due to their incredible rarity throughout the better portion of our lives. Deserts aren't exactly ideal places for such moist entities, after all, so your chances of encountering one in Vegas are exceedingly minute. Same goes for most forms of mushrooms, so we've been pretty astounded by the diversity of forms we've been spying. We've spent a lot of time outdoors simply looking at the ground since we got to the Pacific Northwest, as everything is so verdant and lush there's literally life everywhere we look. A few weeks back we accidentally stepped on a banana slug that was making its way across our step and we were heartbroken! Well, to be honest, I was devastated, since I was likely the culprit behind the slug's untimely demise. We'd noticed the leopard print adorned creature the night prior, and remarked on how stunning it was...then I had to run out to the van to grab something, having forgotten all about our discovery by that point, and when the light of morning revealed what had happened it was long too late... We gave him (or her) a little burial under a bush in the yard. Cheesy, right? I genuinely felt bad about it, and Antho was kind enough to help me dig a little hole to lay them to rest in, along with handling the slimy remains for me. It's the circle of life... Ashes to ashes, slime to slime.
Until next time!
💖
XOXO,
NAU
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