Mystery smell reported across regions of Russia and Finland
Mystery smell reported across regions of Russia and Finland
A strange smell has been reported across the area
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Purely anecdotal, but a time ago we got some chantrelles through foraging. We've foraged for chantrelles for years, no issues. This year had been a big year, came home with maybe 25-30 lbs of chantrelles. Very good meaty chantrelles. Pickled, fried and frozen in butter, you name it. Chantrelles for weeks.
However, after our first meal, the entire house began having a phenomena where all of our poops smelled acutely like burning rubber/ burnt hair. This did not end when we stopped eating the chantrelles, and in fact has lasted for years, almost decades afterwords. Immediately afterwords it was every movement that smelled of burnt rubber/ burnt hair. Now they are relatively occasional, unless its a meal of chantrelles, in which case, its as if the event happened for the first time. I'm convinced we all experienced a shift in our gut microbiome.
I can imagine precisely what the smell they are describing smells like, and there is so much complexity we don't understand around ECM/ fungi/ plant relationships. Things like lobster mushrooms or bacterial/ fungal pathogens. Decaying permafrost and or the microbial processes that come with it.
While that's strange in your case (aren't chanterelles one of the guys you have to cook very thoroughly or they're neuro/cardiotoxic?) they've been monitoring the air for particulate and haven't found anything dangerous, but it wouldn't hurt to shoot an email off to a funguy-ologist in the region to see if they think it has merit, and can contact the relevant authorities if that's the case. Then you win the ego game if it turns out that's what it was.
Nah, chanterelles aren't poisonous. You may be thinking of G. esculenta which have to be parboiled several times for them to be edible.
The ones I'm thinking of grow on the rot inside birch trees and are hard, not slimy, and very slow growing so You're only supposed to sustainably take every 3rd one you come across. And if they're on a different tree, not birch, that's when the issues arise with toxicity. I am picturing it right now I just can't think of the name.
Ahh right. Then it's probably one of the polypores, but there's a looooot of them.
Who tf looks at a disgusting brain shaped mushroom and tries to eat it? God damn I'd rather starve than eat something that looks like that.
Then again I do have an unnatural hatred for all mushrooms. Disgusting little things.
Funny that you're getting downvoted for not liking mushrooms.
I personally love 'em but they can definitely look pretty freaky and they can be pretty slimy too after rain or in moist environments. Acquired taste for sure.
As to who the fuck in their right mind eats poisonous brain shaped mushrooms, it's mostly us weirdos in the northeastern parts of Europe, especially Finland and Russia. The English Wikipedia's a bit wrong about poisonings caused by G. esculenta being common in Scandinavia though; pretty much the only ones eating them around these parts are us Finns and we're not even Scandinavian (which only encompasses Sweden, Norway and Denmark), and the last known fatal poisonings caused by it are from 1953 and 1949 – both caused by a child accidentally eating unprepared mushrooms – and there's only been a few mild cases in the past 20 years, at least a couple of them involving tourists who tried to prepare them themselves. I don't think Swedes or Norwegians really eat them very often, but I dunno about Danes.
Amos Burton prefers algae to mushrooms.