Mycelium Mausoleum

I can procrastinate with the best of them--in fact, most of the time I'm just getting around to procrastinating--but there are things you can't argue with for long, and having a dead-rat smell inside your refrigerator is one of them.

You can let it go a day out of sheer disbelief. You can then imagine the smell is not coming from inside the refrigerator even though it wafts out only when you open the door; you can suppose there is a small deceased rodent behind the refrigerator, and that it will dry up into a cracker if you ignore it thoroughly enough.

You can suspect--if you're really good at this--it is not real at all, but instead is a neurological delusion of the olfactory centers in the brain, triggered by the sound of a refrigerator door opening, just like the one you used to store dead mice in when you worked in a toxicology lab for practically no pay at all.

You figure it's got to be one of those things, because the refrigerator in question is the beer refrigerator, and it's full of beer, which absolutely never smells like a dead rat outside of Iceland, where they make beer out of whale testicles.

Except...it's not completely full of beer. Ever since we took the keg out of it, forty years ago, because we found it attracted more friends than we really wanted, there has been room for a case and a half of beer and several blocks of cheese. I opened the door again. Same smell. But all the cheese is intact. Either swaddled in plastic or wax, every one.

Oh no.

The worms! The worms we kept for Studley have finally turned! We've got a million of them in there. We have four cottage cheese containers of mealworms all lined up to go to heaven in the form of a chickadee gullet, and we never seem to run out. (We haven't even opened containers two through four yet. It's possible we overbought.)

I withdrew a worm container and, with gingerly trepidation, pried open the lid. Worms. Live worms, mostly, that didn't smell.

And finally I saw it. A pound of maitake mushrooms rotting in the bottom crisper because there was no room in the Real Fridge. That was the culprit, all right, every bit as fragrant as a rat gone by, and it had been since the day after I bought them. Maitake mushrooms look like a puffball with a mohawk and they're made of mycelium and money, and I was intending to introduce them to some garnet yams, oil, and feta cheese.

But now I'll have to wait until I save up again.

Mine. All Mine.

"Help yourself," I always say. "Let me get you a bucket," I say.

I get a good raspberry crop and I'm happy to share. The neighbors appreciate the berries. Strangers passing by in the alley leave with juicy grins and a sense of there being goodness in the world. Little kids in particular are enthralled by the idea that they can pluck a morsel of delicious right off the vine at eye level. "Don't forget the sugar snap peas," I'll add. "Want some cucumbers?"

It feels generous and good. Everyone is smiling. I'm such a nice person. What a swell neighborhood.

Stay the hell away from my blueberries.

I mean it. That's why I planted raspberries. Look at the pretty red berries! Don't you want some pretty red berries? Pay no attention to those bushes over there.

Camilla is a raspberry veteran, at age three. Her little brother Sebastian is just learning the ropes, figuring out the difference between the red ones and the really, really red ones, his jammy mouth working under his wide brown eyes. Camilla turns her perfect face up to me. "Thank you for the rassberries," she says.

"You're very welcome," I tell her. Her mom beams. Camilla may have been pre-prompted, but she came through in adorable fashion. She fires off a string of Spanish to her mother and turns back to me with a melting smile, her hands clasped in front of her.

"Are there any booberries yet?"

Devil child. I smile back. "No, honey," I say. "You see? They look blue, but they're not really ripe yet. They'll be a lot better in a couple weeks."

And that is true. At least, it was true a couple weeks ago. Camilla looks at the laden bushes, doubtful.

I'm sorry. But this is the kind of behavior you get from someone who doesn't believe in Hell. I can't

overstate how much I like blueberries. I love birds, but if I see a bird on my blueberry bushes, I'm going to get a tennis racket and smack it into dice. Camilla toddles off with her brother in tow, and I go fetch a bucket. It's time to rescue this crop before it gets over-appreciated.

My goal is to freeze enough blueberries to adorn my daily oatmeal until next season. Shouldn't be a problem this year. The branches are drooping with fruit. They sag like an old woman in an overloaded house dress. I flash-freeze them on a cookie sheet and the berries regiment themselves on it like little geometry geniuses. But nothing beats a fresh blueberry, not even pie. I begin

filling my bucket and do a quality control check with a couple berries. I don't wolf them. I pay attention to them in my mouth. They say they are lonely. I send in a couple more handfuls for company. Then I divert all the larger ones to my mouth because they'd just mess up the cookie sheet geometry. Pretty soon it's a party in there. Blueberries always get along with each other. Before long I have an inch or

two of berries in my bucket and am lying on my back under the bush with a large funnel in my teeth

and shaking the branch above me. One fat berry bounces out and rolls away. I go looking for it just like Jesus and the lost little lamb. Yes. I am totally like Jesus. I don't think Camilla can see me down here.

I believe I might have to buy some cute little Bolivian kid a heifer now.