Squirrels eating fly agarics?

[Gilded]

A few days back I noticed some fly agaric mushrooms growing in my backyard. Today around 40 minutes ago I looked out the window and saw a squirrel running from the nearby forest. The squirrel then briefly munched on a fly agaric, picked it up and ran away with it. Fly agarics contain muscimol which seems to be quite toxic to rats and mice at least and I'd imagine it could be a psychoactive to them as well. I wonder if this squirrel was a narcomaniac? Or just ignorant of the fact that the mushroom could be his/her last meal?

Edited September 2, 2008 by Gilded

[DrP]

I heard that reindeer eat them without too much problem. Apparently, if you drink wee from a reindeer that has metabolised the fly agaric then you can get all of the trippy effects without the death. Some tripes actually feed their reindeer fly agaric for this purpose - or so I've heard. -- just checked by typing "fly agaric reindeer" into google - seems to be true.

 

Maybe you could try drinking the squirrel wee to see if it has the same effect as the reindeer's?

[Gilded]

Maybe you could try drinking the squirrel wee to see if it has the same effect as the reindeer's?

 

I don't think I could recognize it, but I suppose I could try to catch every squirrel in the forest and then proceed to systematically drink each specimen's urine.

 

Btw that "reindeer urine trip" thing was rather popular amongst Finnish shamans as far as I know.

[DrP]

Read the news today and apparently this year there is a bumper crop of fly agaric toadstools. The warm weather and early rains have produced some record crops of some really massive fly agarics.

 

They look pretty - but I wouldn't even touch one - apparently you can die from even the slightest dose of these.

[Gilded]

There's a big one growing in the backyard again... I wonder if I should put up surveillance in case some squirrels need their fix.