Field Notes: September 21, 2026 Location: Beech woods of Kočevski Rog, Kočevje, Slovenia ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Encounter Summary: Matej, who marks trees for the forestry office and has walked the Rog since he was a boy, stopped on the first grey morning of autumn and pointed with a dry twig at a pale round thing in the beech litter, a little smaller than a walnut. I took it for a young puffball until it moved. The skin was cream and papery, with one small dark pore on the crown, and under the rim stood a ring of thin dark legs, more than I could count, and two short antennae. A second one, greyer and a little larger, was half buried under a curled leaf beside it, so still I had not seen it at all. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Matej reached the twig in and tapped the litter twice, softly, a finger's length from the cream one. It did not run. It stepped backward, away from the twig and toward the grey one, and as it went a thin puff of brown dust rose from the pore and settled on the leaf in front of it, a tan smudge on the wet brown. The grey one stirred under its leaf, worked itself out and came to stand beside the first, and the two of them waited, shoulder to shoulder, while the tip of the twig lowered slowly between them. When Matej drew it back, the tip was coated in the same brown dust, a small furred cap of it, as if the twig had been dipped. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Matej calls them prašnice na nogah, the puffballs on legs. The old foresters say that if you find brown dust on the end of your walking stick in the morning, the wood has taken your measure and decided you may pass. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I have entered it as Pulveriger lycoperdoides. My working hypothesis is that the dust is a signature. Each animal carries its own spores on its back and lays them on whatever comes too close, and a twig that leaves the litter dusted is a twig that has been marked, and whoever holds it now carries the mark out of the wood. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ . ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ More at @olegpars7 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ . ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Made with @dreamina_ai seedance 2.0 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ . ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #cryptid #aiart #natgeo #fiction #DreaminaCPP - @olegpars7