A few weeks ago I read an article about star jelly - a mysterious translucent gunk that appears randomly around Britain in the early months of the year. And today, along quiet paths with young Finn, I found some. It was glopped on a moss-covered fallen tree, big blobby lumps of the stuff, pearly and milky, each blob with a single black pupil, grapey clusters of skinless eyeballs.
There are lots of theories about what star jelly is and where it comes from. Slime mold, alien gunk deposited by meteorites, a jellified excretion of some sort from sheep or deer, heron spit ....
I'm pretty confident that this is frog spawn, though - ripped from its mother's body by some predator and discarded because it tastes too foul to eat (I'm guessing that bit - I didn't taste it). There are lots of creatures round here that will eat frogs: foxes, mink, buzzards. Given where I found the star jelly, my guess would be buzzard.
Have heard of 'star jelly' - spent large part of childhood with head buried in Fortean Times type books!
ReplyDeleteThought I'd found some in the garden once - then realised I'd dropped water retaining granules in the gravel when I'd potted up some plants the week before... and it had rained.... doh!