Sunday, November 4, 2012

One year ago today Ranger Davis stomped my Mushrooms

One year ago today Ranger Ken Davis at Staircase stomped my mushrooms and I'm still mad as hell about it. I was well within the legal limit of one quart in the national park. He greatly upset me and my 7 year old daughter. In commemoration of that event I have removed the song that was over the original audio so now everyone can hear what transpired

Park service poaching old growth cedar from Shady Lane Nature Trail at Staircase

Park service poaching old growth cedar from Shady Lane Nature Trail at Staircase

Park service using a wheeled device to  poach old growth cedar
 from Shady Lane Nature Trail at Staircase

No wheeled devices allowed on Shady Lane Nature trail at stair case.




  Davis took one cup of mushrooms away and stomped them because I did not know the ID of every single one of them. His bizarre justification was that it's only legal to pick "edible" fruiting bodies and because there was a chance (ever so slight) that I might have picked in inedible mushroom they all had to be stomped.    He did this in front of my 7 year old daughter, even stomping her edible Zellers Bolete.  He was a fungiphobe on a power trip and according to this email from the visitor center he was wrong!



Good Morning,

This <http://www.psms.org/WAMushroomRulesOct2011.pdf>  is a pdf of all the
regulations for personal harvest in Washington. Olympic National Park allows
you to collect one quart of mushrooms combined. This means you can pick
non-edible as well as edible mushrooms as long as you have no more than one
quart total. Please keep in mind that if you are using any of those
specimens for research purposes that you must obtain a research permit.
Other than that have fun!

Happy hunting,

Olympic National Park Visitor Center
3002 Mount Angeles Road
Port Angeles, WA 98362



The next day I had to go back to look for a missing toy.  I took my husband (who is on oxygen) with me for protection.  We looked for the toy and could not find it so we filed a lost and found report with the Ranger.  When we filed a lost and found report the Ranger started another big fuss about mushrooms he even accused me of being up to something simply because I had no desire to talk to him. He interrogated me and kept circling my car:





Thanks to this I will never again be open with any law enforcement person unless I already know them as a reasonable person.

Until this day my daughter wanted to be a Ranger when she grew up. Now she no longer wants to be a Ranger. Here she was getting her Jr. Ranger Badge at Staircase years before Ranger Davis moved to Staircase.

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