Gloria P wrote:

> Kathleen wrote:
>
>>
>> It was a smooth silver gray oval, maybe two inches long by an inch and
>> a half wide, sort of a cabochon in shape, perhaps 3/8" thick at the
>> center, thinner at the perimeters.
>>
>> It lifted away cleanly from the corn when pried up with the edge of a
>> spoon. The Thing bore the imprint of the corn kernels on its
>> underside, the corn itself was unmarked.
>>
>> I cut it in half lengthwise (to the accompaniment of more yelps and
>> squeals) and the texture was smooth and uniform all the way through.
>> No sign of internal structure or organs or any other gooshy stuff that
>> you might expect from any sort of larva. Cut it again crossways,
>> nothing but more of the same.
>>
>> Shrugged, tossed it in the trash to be followed, at the girls'
>> insistence, by the host ear of corn.
>>
>> My impression was of some sort of fungus or mushroomy thing, but the
>> corn fungus images turned up on a google search looked nothing like
>> what we'd found.
>>
>> Never seen anything like it before or since.
>>
>
> Did you google huitlacoche or corn smut?

Yeah. It looked like some sort of fungus but it didn't really match up
to either the pictures or descriptions of corn smut. Like I said, it
lifted away easily - didn't seem to be part of the corn itself, which is
what you see with smut. And it wasn't black inside, it was gray. Maybe
it was immature, or just some sort of atypical variant.