This morning, I went outside to water the flowers, expecting the same peaceful routine I follow every day. The sun had only just climbed above the rooftops, and the air was still cool. I bent down with the watering can, enjoying the scent of damp soil and fresh blooms, when a sharp metallic odor hit me. It sliced through the sweetness of the garden like a warning. My chest tightened, and for a moment I froze, confused by the smell that seemed out of place among the roses and petunias.
Then I saw it.
Something red and slimy writhed between the petals. It looked like flesh turned inside out, glistening wetly in the morning light. The sight sent a jolt of fear through me. For a second, I truly thought it was alive, some creature gasping in the soil. The stench grew stronger, thick and nauseating, filling my nose with the heavy scent of decay. I crouched closer, holding my breath, unsure whether I should poke it or run inside.
My hands shook as I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo. I needed to know what I was looking at. The thing had four long, finger-like arms spreading outward, each covered in a dark slime. It looked alien, obscene, and wrong.
A quick search brought an answer that was almost as unsettling as the sight itself. Anthurus archeri, better known as the “devil’s fingers” fungus. Native to Australia and Tasmania, it has slowly spread across Europe and North America, appearing in forests, fields, and occasionally, like today, in the quiet corners of people’s gardens.
The more I read, the stranger it seemed. The fungus begins its life as a white, rubbery egg buried in the ground. Inside that egg, the red arms grow, folded tightly together. When the time comes, the outer shell ruptures, and the arms burst through, reaching upward like claws breaking from the earth. A black, foul-smelling slime coats their surface, glistening in the light and drawing every fly in the neighborhood.
The slime, I learned, is not just for show. It mimics the stench of rotting flesh. Flies, deceived by the odor, land on it, believing they have found a meal. They feed on the slime, which contains the fungus’s spores, and as they fly away, they carry those spores to new places. It is nature’s own morbid genius at work, using death’s perfume to promise new life.
No wonder so many people mistake it for something unearthly. I found photos online from others who had stumbled upon it, their reactions eerily similar to mine. Some thought they had found the remains of a dead animal. Others insisted it looked like an alien creature pushing through the dirt. Even knowing what it was, I could not shake the feeling that it did not quite belong here.
I stood in my garden for a long time, torn between fascination and disgust. The flowers I had nurtured all summer now shared their soil with something that smelled like a corpse. Yet I could not deny its strange beauty. It pulsed with life in its own grotesque way, a reminder that nature does not bend to human comfort or aesthetics.
Now, I water around it carefully, avoiding that patch of earth. The devil’s fingers remain, vivid and defiant, a red warning in the green. Whatever it represents, it has claimed its small corner of my garden, and I have decided to let it be. Some things in nature are better left untouched.
