Kathleen wrote:
> Chris Marksberry wrote:
>
>> My husband was shucking corn a little while ago and inside he found a
>> tiny ear of corn next to the whole ear. It looks like the kind you'd
>> see pickled. Never saw that before.
>
> About 4 years back we were over at my parents' house and my daughter and
> her friend, A, were given the task of shucking and cleaning the corn for
> dinner.
>
> I was summoned to the kitchen by a shriek of alarm.
>
> A, a city girl, born and bred, had pulled back the husks on one of the
> ears of corn and found what I can only describe as A Thing.
>
> 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.
>
OMG I bet it was huitlacoche! (sp?) I have a fantasy of finding
that on corn....

--
Jean B.