The homely Amanitas stood apart. The other forest creatures avoided them. They were alone, but not lonely. They had each other. Long ago they staked out their territory and fruited on the same spot every spring. The fallen tree protected them from the wind. Spring brought the rain, unfurling leaves, the smell of fresh pine. Occasionally, creatures much larger than chipmunks and mice, and very different from the local deer parading their new fauns, came tromping through the woods. The unfamiliar creatures made a lot of noise, sounds the mushrooms didn’t understand.
“Look. Over there.”
“And there.”
“And these.”
“Amazing. How many species do you think?”
“What’s that?”
“Where?”
“In the dirt.”
“Is it really?”
One of them squatted down to take a closer look.
Oh, oh, the Amanitas thought. Here it comes. Sometimes the creatures used an appendage to slice other species of mushroom from their roosts. But the creature quickly rose, and stepped back. It stood around with the others for a while, shuffling through the mulch. They all oohed and aahed over the remarkable variety of mushrooms growing on the fallen tree. They poked and prodded the other mushrooms, the mosses, the lichen, and collected samples, but they left the Amanitas alone.