It's good you cut it instead of pulling it up, and firsthand saw the benefits of responsible foraging.
and yeah, the most frighting thing being new to the hobby is how much death and poison is out there. get educated and look at lots and lots of pics. Take spore prints before consuming. I read about a group of teens that picked galerina thinking it was something else, the girl died and the two boys wound up on dialysis for the rest of their life.
(also, destroying angel is one of the coolest names for an organism ever)
Well, she didn't have the knife, and didn't know. I wasn't there either time, I don't even know where exactly it grew on the property.
The name "Destroying Angel" is biblical, by the way. It's a translation of the Hebrew name of the angel of death. Which makes it even more ominous.
And yeah, we just don't trust our observation skills enough to get into the hobby. The fact that my mom can't walk for long distances due to paraparesis (basically, a progressive, hereditary form of paralysis that only weakens the legs, with the added bonus of seizures and other problems that I shouldn't talk about out of respect for her) does not help. Also, the fact that we are in disease tick central (everything from Lyme disease, to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and even ticks that make you allergic to red meat), nobody within walking distance sells DEET (we don't have a car and the bus stop is a mile away) and bobcats roam the area despite us being inside city limits (our area is weird) makes going into the nearby woods a bad idea.
As for horrifying tales, there's an episode of Untold Stories of the ER where an old woman (and highly skilled and experienced forager) mistook either a Death Cap or Destroying Angel (can't remember which) for an edible mushroom she loved. The fact that the edible mushroom smelled like fish and the mushroom she ate smelled far more pleasant did not clue her in to what happened. 48 hours later, her liver started failing
fast, and she remained adamant that she ate the correct mushroom. Worse, this was when the antidote was only being developed; she was in the US, the antidote was still sketchy and only tested in Germany (by one guy no less), and she was not about to make it through the night. Her doctor basically had to be given step-by-step instructions on how to make it. She's lucky she survived.
My advise wasn't meant to dissuade anyone. Instead, I was trying to say to keep your guard up and--even if you know perfectly well what you're doing--bring reference materials with you to help you and
take your time. This is a good hobby for those who know what they're doing, but a slight screw up can really screw you.
