Little Hen in the Big City

While walking down my street, the next block over from my house in a city of almost two-hundred thousand individuals, I happened to glance down at the base of an oak tree and spy a familiar sight:

It's unmistakably a hen of the woods mushroom, a tiny specimen (about two inches in diameter), not like the monster I found two months ago. We've had a cold snap over the past few days, so I don't know if this baby will survive long. At any rate, it's on a fairly well-trafficked street with a lot of dog-walkers, so I'm not exactly fixing to eat it, even if it weren't eradicated by someone less-than-enchanted by ugly fungi.

It's funny how, once one attunes oneself to looking for certain things, they tend to pop up even in unexpected places.