Tripping Squirrelly

We were above
You standing underneath us
We were not yet lovers
Dragons were smoked
Bumblebees were stinging us
I was soon to be crazy
Eat, drink and be merry
For tomorrow we die
cause were tripping billies
(Dave Matthews, Tripping Billies)

Well, this should rightfully make you nervous. Hallucinating squirrels tripping about the forest. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Fairbanks reader Darleen Masiak recently saw a red squirrel carrying an Amanita mushroom across her deck, presumably to stash it in its midden for the winter. She wanted to know how such a small mammal could survive after eating a mushroom that is so toxic.

Fungus expert Gary Laursen of the University of Alaska Fairbanks confirmed that forest squirrels, both red and flying, cache Amanita mushrooms as well as other "psychoactive" mushrooms that affect the central nervous system. He has dug into squirrel middens in the boreal forest and has found many samples of the mushrooms.

"Many animals are known to go after the psychoactive 'shrooms," Laursen said.

Brian Barnes, a physiologist and the director of the Institute of Arctic Biology, said a squirrel's liver might be able to detoxify the active agents in the mushrooms, but he knows of no evidence for this.

Barnes studies Arctic ground squirrels on Alaska's North Slope. He thinks young male ground squirrels might be eating lots of fungi, including potent ones, as they stir in their dens from hibernation.

The squirrels often emerge from hibernation fatter than when they went in.

"I wonder if, while in their cold and completely dark hibernaculum, Arctic ground squirrels are eating psychoactive mushrooms and whether they respond by experiencing hallucinations, feelings of well being, and laughing fits, as do humans (or so I'm told)," Barnes wrote in an e-mail.

Gee, that's a cheery thought. The problem is that squirrels all share a single group consciousness. They have a hive mind, so to speak. So when one is tripping out, they all are. Which means that at any given moment, the odds of a squirrel being in a drug-induced haze approach unity. We're really going to be in trouble if they start lacing human's food with their stored crops of Amanita mushrooms. In large enough dosages, those are lethal. Squirrels with drug habits might also go a long way toward explaining a ravening case of the munchies.