The chipmunk had no idea that Amanita spores were stuck to the bottom of its feet. It must have stepped on a piece of decaying fruit. Before it climbed onto the splayed belly of the old oak to get a better look out into the forest, the bottom of its foot itched, so it scratched it on the ground in front of the tree. That’s when the spores rubbed off and stuck tight.
It was a wet summer followed by a cool, damp fall. The spores settled in. The following spring a strain of Coral Fungi fruited first, covering one end of the trunk with its pale pink, spiky branches. Woody clusters of striped Polyporous Versicolor took over the underside. Buff brown clumps of tiny Mycena established a colony. The trunk had hosted all of those varieties before. This year there was a new one. It had taken root on the ground a few feet away. Unbeknownst to the fallen tree, the new mushroom had no real connection to it. Instead it had entered into a mycorrhizal relationship with a standing oak about fifteen feet away. The new mushroom’s hyphae formed a sheath of fungus around the living oak’s tiny rootlets, providing them with nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients in return for moisture and a hand to hold when the weather got bad. Pearly white buds eventually telescoped up tapered stems and bloomed into buttery rounded caps, a full-blown strand of Amanita Phalliodes, not as pretty as the European Amanita Virosa, but just as deadly.
When the pearly white buttons first popped up, a pair of red squirrels cocked their heads and snuck up on them. They looked tasty. But when they got close enough to sniff they looked at each other and said, “Phew-eeee.” The odor was faint, an unmistakable whiff of Eau de Chlorine, undetectable unless you were a rodent dressed up in a fancy coat. The word went out. Even the snails cut the baby Amanitas a wide berth.