Reporter mistakes sex toy for magic mushroom

The "very young and sheltered" reporter would soon be immortal, at least for a few day on the Internet. (YouTube)

In college, I knew people who could identify every mushroom dotting the moist, fertile South Georgia landscape.

Unfortunately, when a mysterious object was unearthed while drilling a new well shaft in western China, the good people living there had no such experts.

ABC News reports the villagers in Liucunbu believed the double-headed object to be a rare mushroom.

A TV reporter, Yunfeng Ye, traveled there to to check out the “flexible, fungi-like object.”

Ye and the local villagers, after much probing and fondling, determined the bulbous thing was “a shelf fungus of the Ganoderma lucidum species, which according to legend has the ability to give immortality.”

The magic mushroom has indeed granted immortality: the reporter will forever be known as the reporter that was fooled by a sex toy.

Once the TV program aired, viewers called in to accurately identify the mystery object as a rubber vagina.

An online video (which may be considered graphic by some) has been viewed millions of times, probably by laughing people.

“Our reporter is very young and sheltered,” said the TV station afterwards.