By Scott Shephard

I don’t know about you, but I have an approach/avoidance reaction to mushrooms. They are fascinating to me but also a little creepy. I certainly don’t like mushrooms in my food, except for Campbells Creme of Mushroom soup.

I blame my parents for my mycophobia (yes, there’s a word for “fear of mushrooms”). They repeatedly warned my brother and me about eating mushrooms we might find outside. As if I would eat something that can grow out of a cowpie . . . .

Anyway, I found these fun guys growing on a non-cowpied hiking trail near Bull Shoals Lake in Arkansas, where Deb and I are camping. Deb pointed them out to me. I would have otherwise missed them and maybe stepped on them.

It makes me shiver to think about smashing these photogenic but possibly malevolent beings.

Canon R5 1/13 sec f/4.5 ISO 400