Amoebae?

The splash of colour on the forest floor in this picture is a slime mould.

Yesterday a woman came into the Nature House and told us she had seen a strange fungus on one of the outer trails. When the programmes had finished, I said I'd go and check it out.
Half an hour later, both of us were dispatched, suited and booted, a pair of secateurs each in case any trail maintenance was needed, a first aid kit in case one of us chopped anything we hadn't meant to, a bucket to collect slugs and another to collect a Northwestern garter snake. The only thing missing was a butterfly net that was taller than either of us.

Since the day was sweltering, there was no question of any slugs being out for a walk, similarly there was never any chance of a snake hanging around waiting for us to catch it, let alone the exact one to order.

BUT....we found our strange orange 'fungus'. It looked as though someone had spilt wax on the forest floor.
We picked up a bit and scrutinised it. It looked like a sponge. We put some in one of our buckets, it rattled around in there, and when we got back to the Nature House we looked it up. And up and up and up. We had to wait until our House Naturalist came in this morning for an identification.

Slime moulds are one of those things they teach you about in biology lessons, is it a fungus, is it an amoeba?
One type live as single celled organisms until the food runs out and then they join together and move off like a huge amorphous slug, like something Tim Burton might have in a film. Amazing and disgusting at the same time.

But enough already about the slime moulds, let's talk about something else. Maybe the G8 agreement that George Bush refuses to play ball with ? Silly sausage. But no matter, the prime minister of our Province, Gordon Campbell and Arnie, King of California have joined together to come up with their own game plan for dealing with climate change. And Arnie has told the car manufacturers to get their acts together. The Governator means business.

At long last we got to see the update on Jamie Oliver's school dinners series. That man is a diamond. He has made real change in the face of almost total apathy by the stupid parents. The government boshed over the money that they had promised, but the parents, instead of supporting the scheme, undermined it by continuing to give their kiddies money to spend on junk food, only now, the money couldn't be spent in school because they were no longer selling crap so they were buying the same junk, just in shops on the way to school.

'I've been PC about parents,' said Jamie, 'but now I've fed up with it, if you continue to buy your kids fizzy drink after fizzy drink and crap, then you're a fucking arsehole.'

Jamie mate, you never said a truer word.

Here, the proper TV programmes have all but finished. We face a TV summer desert. What do we have to look forward to?
American Inventor, America's got talent, American Spelling Bee.

I think I'd rather watch the slime mould.