[pubutil]

Your story reminded me of one of my own:

A few years back I was helping clear out my parents’ garage, as they were having plumbing issues and needed a path cleared for the plumber. Eventually I come across a strange looking box with some weird brown tubes poking out of it. I look up at the ceiling, and see the waste pipe from a toilet. There was not only a hole in the ceiling, but a huge hole in the top of the waste pipe.

Turns out that strange box was full of newspapers that had had raw sewage dripping onto it for who knows how long. Those “brown tubes” were actually some sort of fungus, and when I looked closer, it was quite literally spewing out spores. It looked like steam.

I was horrified at the idea of this fungus surviving on nothing but sewage and ran to grab a respirator before rushing the thing into a compost bin. Wish I’d taken a photo, but my mind was elsewhere at the time.

[jc6]

Scary. Its really fascinating how they have such capacity to spread into every nook they can find. We spent a lot of time wondering how such an exotic looking thing, showed up in basically an urban closed off area (barely any windows) where you rarely see any kind of fungus growing. Must be producing a ton of spores.

[barrenko]

Oh man, this would make a cool Dr. House episode resolution.

[sleepybrett]

Or the end of the intro for last of us 3

[m463]

The strange fungus is probably engineeriei cubifarmiculi.

These also grow inside electronic devices and nasa facilities.