Mushroom hunters have a passion
07.05.11
During the long, cold winter months, mushroom hunters' dreams turn toward the sunny spring days when they pull on their hiking boots, grab a mesh potato sack and return to the ridges and hillsides in search of treasured morel mushrooms.
While the cool, wet weather has been cursed by many across the region, the conditions have produced a bumper crop of mushrooms that has made this year's hunt that much more rewarding.
Morels can be expected to thrive in wooded areas, but when Mia Ralph, 4, and Zoey Ralph, 7, found 31 of them while playing their yard in Chillicothe, it came as quite a surprise.
"The girls had been swinging on the swingset, looked down and saw mushrooms," said their grandma, Brenda Brown, of Chillicothe. "They came into the house and asked their mom for a sack to put them in. At first, she told them not to play with them, thinking that they were poisonous mushrooms or toadstools, but they were morels."
The girls' immediate action after locating the urban mushroom cache was to call grandma.
Source: Mansfield News Journal