I’m having returning waves of nausea after accidentally allowing malevolent rays in through the closed drapes I had hoped would quarantine me from bizarro world.
By way of a chink in the blinks came recent news items belching details of the ongoing stranger-than-fiction conversion to the post-truth world, where enemies of the environment control the EPA, friends of the 1% control budget and economics,  and friends of the NRA and fans of war control the Defense Department, and so on and so on.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the seasons unfold apace and interesting fungus-infested rotten branches fall from the trees along the New Road. Thank god, some sense of life as we once knew it.
This particular branch, if you could see inside it, is little else than wood duff that was once cellulose and lignin, and now, mostly fungal threads.
The “tree ears” that manifest from those threads are gelatinous, translucent excrescences, the external fungus parts swollen and jelly-like after a rain. Before being hydrated, you would only have seem some black scaly growths that would have looked like the lichens that also inhabit such branches.
They are quite variable in form and color, as you can see from this page of google image results.
And now I will slink back into my hermetically-sealed cave, making a more sincere and complete effort to block out the death-rays of current events that would suck the life and soul out of me.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that. Kind of scary. Like bizarro world.
Mr. B, how the heck are you? Yep these things qualify as “ikky” but harmless. The yellow jelly fungi are called “witches butter.” We find those too.