Rain has brought psychedelic fungi --- and people seeking them --- to pastures
By Pamela J. Johnson
Around midnight, looking out his window after a recent storm, Jim Adams saw tiny beams of light in his cow pasture.
"It wasn't much of a moon, but i could faintly see shadows moving in my field," Adams recounted
He grabbed his rifle, went outside and confronted intruders who had come on to his pasture not to rustle his cows but to make off with mushrooms.
Crouched with their flashlights over piles of manure, they were seeking "magic mushrooms" --- psychedelic fungi that sprout in cow dung after the rain.
As Adams raced toward them, the trepassers dashed back to their truck parked nearby. "Hey, I saw you climb through my fence!" he hollered at them. "You were trespassing."
"No, sir," One replied. "We were just taking a walk in the neighborhood."
Angery cattle ranchers throughout Central Florida --- a region awash in nearly daily deluges --- says they're chasing off the mushroom hunters several times a week.
"I've had nothing but trouble since the rains began," said Adams, who manages 2,000 acres where he keeps 300 head of cattle in east Orange county. "This year has been worse than ever."
Trespassers let cows out
It's not only trespassing that enrages ranch owners. To gain access to fields, the culprits cut wire fences or kick down wooden gates. At times, cows get out. Some have been rounded up on congested roadways, such as State Road 20.
On Aug. 22, Orange County deputy sheriffs shot and killed five cows from the Desert Ranch that had wandered onto the Bee Line Expressway and were creating traffic havoc. Officals did not know whether mushroom hunters were responsible.
Some of Adam's cattle got out recently and wandered to Lake Pickett Road.
"It's just a matter of time before somebody gets killed," Adams said. "A car could hit a cow and --- wham! --- that would be it" --- for the cow and, perhaps the driver who hit it.
Adams said some of the trespassers he has caught have told him they learned on the internet about the Bithlo and Christmas cattle ranches and their crops of mind-blowing mushrooms.
The mushrooms contrain psilocybin, a chemical that causes hallucinations when ingested. They grow in manure after rainstorms when temperatures reach 65 to 85 degrees. Because of their rank smell, the fungi are usually dried before consumed. They may be steeped in tea or mixed in soup.
For centuries, magic mushrooms have been harvested around the world and eaten for their psychedelic effects. Many species contain psilocybin, and not all of them grow in cow manure.
When mushroom pickers see Adams racing toward them with a rifle, they often leave behind a basket, plastic bag, or backpack filled with mushrooms.(no shit?) Once Adams found a cell phone in the middle of his pastures.
Adams has called Orange County deouty sheriffs, but by the time they arrive, the tresspassers usually are gone. It's not unusual to wait an hour for help to arrive, ranchers say. At times they say, a deputy dosen't show up at all.
Sheriff's officials admit that such calls in the past have taken a low priority. But as a result of the growing problem, sheriff's drug agents in east Orange say they plan to step up enforcement efforts.
Deputy Sheriif Randy Armstrong, whose territory covers east Orange, said he issues about a dozen trespassering warnings and citations a month, althought he said the number of rancher complaints is much higher.
"I'm being a nice guy by giving them a ticket or a warning," Armstrong said. "If I wanted to, i could haul them off to jail."
Ranchers wish deputies would take off the kid gloves.
"You call the sheriff's department and tell them you got a mushroom picker in your pasture, and you're on the bottom of the list," said Gerald Simmons, president of the Orange County Cattlemen's Association, which represents 105 ranchers.
"You could be holding a gun on them for two hours waiting," said Simmons, who owns tow small cattle ranches in east Orange.
Law Rarely enforced
Sheriff's drug agent Robert Curtin said a Florida law pertaining to psilocybin is rarely enforced.
Psilocybin is considered a controlled substance under Florida law, the same as opium or LSD; anyone caught possessing psilocybin mushrooms could face third-degree felony charges. There also are dangers of accidentally gathering a poisonous mushroom or having a "bad trip" from a psilocybin mushroom, agents said.
But to charge someone, a deputy making an arrest would have to identify the mushrooms as having psilocybin. There is no test kid, as there are for drugs such as LSD or cocaine.
Curtin said few deputies have that kind of expertise, and the ones who do rarely get an opportunity to make such arrests. Drug agents usually work undercover searching for drug dealers.
And mushroom pickers typically do not sell the drug.
In fact, officals said only a handful of mushroom pickers were charnged with drug possesion in Orange Country in the past year.
To complicate mushroom pickers are not always trespassing on private property. They often hunt mushrooms on state-owned property, where cattle owners lease the pastureland.
That's when Officer Brain Baine of the Florida Fish & WIldlife Conservation Commission is sometimes called.
Recently, Baine questioned two young men from Miami found picking mushriims in east Orange.
Althrough they were not technically trespassing, Baine issused them a trespassing warning.
"The state is still steward of the land," Baine said. John Tanner manages thousands of acres of state and county owned land where he keeps cattle in Christmas.
An hour after it rains, he spies the mushrooms pickers in the field. Recently, a picker cut off a gate lock on county owned property, and some of the cows got out and were found on State Road 50.
Stomping on a mushroom with a cowboy boot, Tanner said he is fed up with mushroom pickers.
"I tell them, "Hey, kids, respect my property,' " Tanner said. "I'll let you go this time, but don't come back!"
"All they do is give me the finger."
Artical out of the Orlando Sentinel
Local&State
Tuesday, September 3, 2002
Section B
Sorry for any spelling errors 
Edited by Thor (09/04/02 10:58 AM)
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