Not That Kind of Mushroom

Recently a group of workers excavating a well in the Chinese town of Liucunbu made an amazing discovery. The object in question, found 80 meters down, was identified as a rare lingzhi mushroom, said to grant immortality to those who ingest it. Unfortunately for those who hoped to extend their lives, though, the magical mushroom was not a mushroom at all, but rather a discarded sex toy. How it wound up 80 meters underground remains a mystery.

When villagers drilling a well shaft found the object, they called a local TV station, which sent over a reporter to cover the discovery. They thought they had discovered a rare fungus. "It has an eye and a nose, but we don’t know what it is,” one of the villagers tells the Chinese reporter, according to an English translation from ABC.

But this was no miraculous mushroom. Several viewers pointed out the mysterious object was actually an artificial vagina -- a sex toy -- The Mirror notes. "Ignorance is horrible. How can the reporter mistake a sex toy for fungus?" one viewer commented on his Weibo microblog, according to the Mirror.

I suppose nothing confers immortality like gnawing on a hunk of silicone. Or rubber. Or whatever this thing happens to made of. The Chinese television network issued a rather pitiful apology, claiming that it was the reporter's fault for being "young and unfamiliar with worldly affairs," but come on. The network has plenty of producers and higher-ups who apparently didn't see the "mushroom" for what it was either.