After the shellacking Alabama's Crimson Tide put on Michigan's Wolverines last night (41 to 14), the Big Ten would rather talk about mushrooms. Big ones, the size of footballs. I mean, soccer, soccer balls.

Speaking of shellac and mushrooms, I've sprayed varnish on unusually beautiful mushrooms and toadstools for years, which preserves them rather well.

After the shellacking Alabama's Crimson Tide put on Michigan's Wolverines last night (41 to 14), the Big Ten would rather talk about mushrooms. Big ones, the size of footballs. I mean, soccer, soccer balls.

Speaking of shellac and mushrooms, I've sprayed varnish on unusually beautiful mushrooms and toadstools for years, which preserves them rather well.

And where is Sheri Gilmour's "Stick Science" when one needs it? Alien eggs ALWAYS require poking with a stick. Sweet Steve McQueen, what is wrong with people nowadays?

As your unofficial correspondent in Michigan I have to admit that's pretty big news around here. Does more interesting stuff happen in other states?

As a Michigan boy myself, I once found one of these things in my back yard. I had no idea what it was, and neither did my friends or parents. Sucker was huge, too. So I, like any enterprising 9-year-old did back in the days before they had metal detectors and did full-body scans at the schoolhouse door, brought it to school for show & tell. The teacher, an older Canadian lady who was also an experienced mushroom picker, knew right away what it was, and gave an impromptu and fascinating class on the various types of fungi, and then decided on the spot to add "fungus appreciation" to her curriculum. It was great, because we got to go outside to collect the various specimens, argue with each other as we tried to look them up in the guidebooks, and compete with each other to find the most beautiful, or weirdest, mushroom, shelf fungus, or whatever we could. That semester was a blast, and I actually learned something that I still remember.