FOR SALE: Registered black-and-tan mushroom hound.

Actually, I don't have a mushroom hound, of any color. If I did have a mushroom hound, it would not be for sale right now. Because it's mushroom season.

Probably. It's a little hard to tell exactly when mushroom season gets here. Morel mushrooms are sensitive to things like sunlight and soil temperature and pay no attention at all to the calendar. Down our way, mushrooms usually sprout sometime between Income Tax deadline and May Day.

Good mushroom hunters (also sensitive to things like sunlight) just know when the time is right. When mayapples spread their umbrellas and dogwoods bloom. Along about now.

Some people call them "sponges" because of the morel mushroom's convoluted surface. They are sort of Christmas-tree shaped, ranging in color from cream to grayish tan. And they are hard to find, growing among last fall's leaf crop. People find mushrooms about anywhere-along small streams and dry branches; in creek-bottom fields; around rotting tree stumps--especially elm stumps. You can find mushrooms in the same place year after year, then never find them there at all. And you have to find them pretty quick. Mushroom season is short. Morels last for a week or two, then dry up and blow away, unless some lucky mushroom hunter finds them first.

And when you do find them, they are delicious, breaded and lightly fried in butter.

There's a mystique about mushrooms and mushroom hunting that gives rise to nearly as many tall tales as fishing and golfing put together. Last year, a fellow who is otherwise reliable told me he found a mushroom so big he had to use a chainsaw to cut it down. I'd be the last to suggest that he was stretching things. I myself have seen some pretty strange things where mushrooms are concerned.

The popularity of the morel mushroom (sponge, if you prefer), apart from its delicious taste and thrill of discovery, is due largely to its easy identity. Once you learn to recognize morels, they have no exact lookalikes in the mushroom and toadstool world.

And it's important to make positive identification of fungi foodstuffs, because some toadstools are deadly poisonous. Better to be sure than to have your stomach pumped.