7/06/06-- There is a giant amoeba roaming my lawn! Really. In the wee hours of the morning, a creeping, gelatinous mass of goo moves across my front yard devouring everything in its path. This bizarre, but apparently common life form is known as Fuligo septica, or dog vomit slime mold! It is not a fungus at all, but a large mass of cell nuclei called plasmodium (sounds yummy,) free of individual cell-wall structures, and enclosed in a single membrane.

Remember in school the pond water protozoa that you observed under a microscope? Now, imagine that critter, the size of a bagel moving around your yard, in what is termed as the "slug stage" of the organism. Mowing does not kill it. Fungicides don?t touch it. And, in my 101 degree southern California weather, it is thriving. The pictures show it in several stages of its life cycle. When sliced open, the amoeba oozes out a pungent slime from its fleshy core.

Researchers have used slime molds to remotely control robotic devices, and have shown that they can navigate the shortest path through a maze in laboratory experiments, sense without a nervous system, and "see" in the infrared spectrum. Remember, "The Blob"? - I am digging up my lawn tomorrow.
-- Daniel Puleo

Lovely...and there's no way to get rid of them either!