To ensure everyone entering his household from this day forth knows he is at the top of the food chain in these Pacific Northwest forests, today a local mushroom hunter mounted the entire head of Lion’s Mane he bagged this week atop his fireplace.
“If you think that giant trophy head looks big and scary right now, you have no idea what it was like to stand face to face with it in the wild—man versus nature—when I spotted it by myself in the forest,” said Wolfe Warner to dinner guests at his Bainbridge Island home tonight. “The entire half hour I stood in the rain flipping through my mushroom foraging book making sure it was edible and not poisonous, the mushroom’s potential amatoxins could’ve pounced on me and paralyzed me at any moment. I’m actually still so scared it might be too poisonous to eat that I just made it a wall decoration instead. Still feel pretty proud of it, though.”
A handful of Warner’s friends confessed anonymously that they’re kind of disgusted by his hunting habits, and wished he’d stop.
“I just don’t understand why it isn’t wonderful enough to witness a Lion’s Mane out in nature, completely unbothered by humans—why do we have to cut any of them down in their prime, you know?” said one friend, shaking her head. “It’s just completely unnecessary. Personally, I think a giant Lion’s Mane head like that looks more beautiful when it’s free to happily fruit on a pile of rot.”
At press time, Warner’s guests were running out of his house after stumbling into a room full of partially taxonomied Turkey Tails, Puffballs and Chanterelles.
