Giant Fungus

40-acre growth found in Michigan. — The Los Angeles Times The sky is full of ruddy ducks and widgeon's, mockingbirds, bees, bats, swallowtails, dragonflies, and great horned owls. The land below teems with elands and kit foxes, badgers, aardvarks, juniper, banana slugs, larch, cactus, heather, humankind. Under them, a dome of dirt. Under that, the World's Largest Living Thing spreads like a hemorrhage poised to paralyze the earth—like a tumor ready to cause 9.0 convulsions, or a brain dreaming this world of crickets and dung beetles, sculpins, Beethoven, coots, Caligula, St. Augustine grass, Mister Lincoln roses, passion fruit, wildebeests, orioles like sunspots shooting high, then dropping back to the green arms of trees, their roots sunk deep in the power of things sleeping and unknown.