Basket Stinkhorn of Doom

So after I started working in my front yard I started to get these alien mushrooms. They would start as white eggs that would then erupt into these bright red whiffle balls. They look insane, like nature thought this was a good idea?!?! If it was just that I’d be like cool, neat mushroom. But it gets worse

These Basket Stinkhorn mushrooms are native to Europe but can now be found on all continents except Antarctica. They are a wood decomposer so may show up after adding wood mulch like they did for me. So one day I was coming out to garden and I smelled natural gas. Like oh no, got to deal with this right now. I called my utility and they had someone out within an hour. He took out his probe and wandered around my house. No gas. But I could still smell it so what was happening?!?! I finally realized it was coming from the shroom, really earning their stinkhorn name. If I had just looked them up originally I would have saved myself an annoying day. Did I mention the tech had to go over to the neighbors properties too? Fun.    When I finally figured it out I told my Firefighter neighbor and boy did he get a kick out of laughing at me. With me? Nope…If annoyance and humiliation wasn’t enough these Alien Shrooms still had it out for me. 

On the second day we got Nacho and I’m taking him out for a walk. I make it 20 feet from my front door and Nacho dashes into the garden and starts to eat one!!! All I could think was I killed my puppy. So I’m madly pulling the shards of the shroom out of his mouth and using my shirt to wipe the bits off his lips and nose. The little pisher then wiggled out of my grip and tried to make another go for the mushrooms! I swear, puppies are just trying to kill themselves all the time and always looking for new and creative ways to accomplish this! After getting Nacho in the house and some googling it looks like the mushrooms aren’t poisonous but may cause gastrointestinal distress. Luckily I think I got it all out of his mouth before he could swallow anything so we didn’t have any issues. So if you’ve been invaded by these Alien Shrooms I hope you can learn from my travails! I’m basically just live and let live with these, but if any of you out there have any ways of dealing with them, let me know in the comments. The only idea I have is to try and out compete them with another mushroom. Northspore says oyster and wine cap mushrooms grow vigorously, so maybe I’ll see if they’ll win. Hit like and subscribe, I’m gardener coo chasing around Nacho, desperately trying to keep him alive!