PINE CONES vs. MUSHROOMS

PINE CONES vs. MUSHROOMS

                I have learned to survive (and even thrive!) on pine cones.  Plenty of them out there!  Most of the year I can find them fairly easily.  The early, green ones are sorta crunchy and chewy, even if somewhat bitter.  The later ones I find rotting on the ground are very different – soft, and full of little surprises!

                What I really do not understand is those weirdos who wander through the woods searching and looking for mushrooms.  Those weirdos have to search and dig for hours.  Don’t they know those things are poisonous?  That might explain what’s wrong with so many of them?!  Besides, it is just so much easier to pick up pine cones.

                I have talked to a few of them.  Tried to understand them; but, they are just so different.  I’ve heard them whisper about the “delicate flavor” of this shroom and the “woody bouquet” of that one.  On and on they go about ‘em.  They sit around and talk about books they read about the things.  They are always trying to get us cone-heads to try one.  Ugh!  (Frankly, I think they are smoking some of them.)  Fungus!  They are eating fungus.  I think there’s a fungal infection between their ears.

 
                Worst of all, they think we are heathen and cretans.  They are the wooses.  Real men eat cones.  They gather in their little groups and talk about shrooms and how to spread the fungus.  They send some of their people to the far corners of civilization and spread their nonsense.  They want us all under their umbrella!  They say it is for our own good.  And they make that nauseating “cream of mushroom” concoction.

                I’d like to get into a contest with them – they can throw three to my one cone.  I will leave them so bruised and bleeding that they will be drinking mushroom tea.  I just hope they do not hit me in the face with a morel.  I’m scared already, just thinking about it.

                Pine cones for me.  Us normal folks just pick up the closest cone and chomp away.  Unless, of course, it’s got shrooms growing on it.  Really, those cappers have no flavor, anyway.  Besides, who wants to eat something a frog has been squatting on?!  And, they say we are the "squirrely" ones?!