Dr. Leospace
Alpiniste Kundalini
When fungi pop up, so do thieves
Spring rains bring unwanted visitors to a cow pasture: wild mushrooms and those who seek magic in them.
HUDSON - The thieves come after the spring rains. They carry grocery bags or water jugs with widened spouts. They ignore the cattle. They go straight for the dung.
Mysterious prizes spring from the piles in this 75-acre pasture off Hicks Road. Some species can produce a high similar to LSD. Others can be fatal.
The prizes are known as magic mushrooms.
And Gary Joiner wishes they didn't exist.
Joiner, 65, leases this land to grow beef cattle. He says the mushroom harvesters have put him under siege. He sees all kinds: old and young, smart and dumb, pretty and ugly. But mostly they are persistent.
"They come in here every day," he said. "There is no way to stop them."
Joiner said the thieves breach his fence as many as five times a week. This allows the cattle to get out, often with disastrous consequences. He said he once had to settle for $100,000 with a man who claimed one of Joiner's cows had gored him in the groin.
Wild mushrooms have been used in religious rituals since 3,000 B.C., said James Kimbrough, a mycologist fungi expert and professor at the University of Florida. But some of them contain chemicals that can destroy red blood cells and even cause death.
The harvesters often boil the mushrooms into a sort of tea in hopes of reaching a psychedelic high, said Lt. Robert Sullivan of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. "Then they drink this ghastly, disgusting stuff, and they sit around and they poison themselves."
It is not illegal to possess psychedelic mushrooms in Florida, Sullivan said. Users can be busted only if they're caught after they've isolated the chemicals, and that rarely happens. So law enforcement goes after them with the stiffest possible charge: trespassing.
The latest episode took place Wednesday morning. Joiner got a call that his cattle were loose. When he drove up from New Port Richey to check it out, he found a gap in the fence. And beyond an oak grove to the south, he saw three figures.
They saw Joiner and took off. Sheriff's deputies went after them. Deputies caught them about 20 minutes later in a field behind All Saints Lutheran Church on Hudson Avenue. A 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl were warned and released to their parents.
John Steven Ruch, 20, went to jail on a charge of resisting an officer.
Ruch was released Wednesday on $500 bail. At his single-wide manufactured home off Terrace Drive Thursday morning, a polite young woman answered the door. She wore a blue T-shirt that said "Vote For Pedro."
She said Ruch was not available for an interview.
She said he was not feeling well.
Thomas Lake can be reached at [email protected] or (727) 869-6245
Spring rains bring unwanted visitors to a cow pasture: wild mushrooms and those who seek magic in them.
HUDSON - The thieves come after the spring rains. They carry grocery bags or water jugs with widened spouts. They ignore the cattle. They go straight for the dung.
Mysterious prizes spring from the piles in this 75-acre pasture off Hicks Road. Some species can produce a high similar to LSD. Others can be fatal.
The prizes are known as magic mushrooms.
And Gary Joiner wishes they didn't exist.
Joiner, 65, leases this land to grow beef cattle. He says the mushroom harvesters have put him under siege. He sees all kinds: old and young, smart and dumb, pretty and ugly. But mostly they are persistent.
"They come in here every day," he said. "There is no way to stop them."
Joiner said the thieves breach his fence as many as five times a week. This allows the cattle to get out, often with disastrous consequences. He said he once had to settle for $100,000 with a man who claimed one of Joiner's cows had gored him in the groin.
Wild mushrooms have been used in religious rituals since 3,000 B.C., said James Kimbrough, a mycologist fungi expert and professor at the University of Florida. But some of them contain chemicals that can destroy red blood cells and even cause death.
The harvesters often boil the mushrooms into a sort of tea in hopes of reaching a psychedelic high, said Lt. Robert Sullivan of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. "Then they drink this ghastly, disgusting stuff, and they sit around and they poison themselves."
It is not illegal to possess psychedelic mushrooms in Florida, Sullivan said. Users can be busted only if they're caught after they've isolated the chemicals, and that rarely happens. So law enforcement goes after them with the stiffest possible charge: trespassing.
The latest episode took place Wednesday morning. Joiner got a call that his cattle were loose. When he drove up from New Port Richey to check it out, he found a gap in the fence. And beyond an oak grove to the south, he saw three figures.
They saw Joiner and took off. Sheriff's deputies went after them. Deputies caught them about 20 minutes later in a field behind All Saints Lutheran Church on Hudson Avenue. A 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl were warned and released to their parents.
John Steven Ruch, 20, went to jail on a charge of resisting an officer.
Ruch was released Wednesday on $500 bail. At his single-wide manufactured home off Terrace Drive Thursday morning, a polite young woman answered the door. She wore a blue T-shirt that said "Vote For Pedro."
She said Ruch was not available for an interview.
She said he was not feeling well.
Thomas Lake can be reached at [email protected] or (727) 869-6245
