Six Family Members Hospitalized After Eating Poisonous Mushrooms

[matcom]

<snip>

Six members of a Santa Cruz County family are being treated for liver damage in a San Francisco hospital after they consumed a New Year's Day feast of freshly picked wild mushrooms that apparently contained the notoriously poisonous Amanita phalloides, also known as death caps.

Four of the six are so seriously ill that they may require liver transplants at California Pacific Medical Center. All the victims were transferred there Thursday from Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, where they were originally admitted Monday evening.

Ranging in age from 17 to 77, the six include a grandmother from Mexico who was visiting her daughter's family for the holidays. She was familiar with edible mushrooms in Mexico, and had taken the family on successful mushroom-hunting expeditions before. This time, she may have been fooled by similar-looking, but potentially deadly, fungi collected at the Wilder Ranch State Park just north of Santa Cruz.

<snip>

Mushroom poisonings can be particularly tragic because wild mushrooms are often consumed at large family gatherings. "Mushroom-eating is something people don't do in isolation," he said.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/06/BAGTRNDU041.DTL

[crispini]

1. Okay, sad, BUT.

"Mushroom-eating is something people don't do in isolation" -- funniest. quote. evah.

[jmowreader]

2. This is the culprit right here

The Death Cap mushroom:



The Destroying Angel mushroom:



From what I've heard, the three most common ways to get poisoned by eating mushrooms are to eat one of these two mushrooms, or to get botulism from a can of mushrooms--the hardest vegetable in the world to can properly.

(Besides, you shouldn't eat those slimy-ass canned mushrooms anyway.)

OTOH, this is the species you WANT to pick...



:evilgrin: