Bamboo, rats, and table fungus

Winter did a number on the screening plants in the NW corner of the back garden. That building (a two-tone garage, see the full ugly here) had been hidden by leaves and branches of Fatsia polycarpa, Pittosporum illicioides 'Strappy', and from this vantage point very dense bamboo.
Still, I was very happy to see fat new culms emerging.
I even tossed keys into the photo for scale, to show Andrew.
This had happened.
And another...they even dug down below the soil level to get this one. It's like they're training to sniff for truffles, or rather bamboo shoots.
The sneaky little bastards only come out at night (I've never seen one, well, except for a dead one [a neighbor had put our poison] some 10 years or so ago).
My first experience with bamboo-eating rats was the year I cut the Sasa palmata f. nebulosa back when it had mites.
The new growth was being mowed down as fast as it could shoot (that's this year's version in the photo), and smart friends insisted it was the work of rats. I didn't want to believe, but the more people I talked to, the more I learned I was fooling myself. I live in an urban environment. There are rats.

They're hitting the sasa again this year, but there's so much of it that the loss isn't as harsh.
Then, since it was nearby, they sampled the new growth on Mahonia oiwakenses ssp lomariifolia v tenuifoliola.
Winter killed off the old growth, then 2 out of 9 new stems are rat-food. You guys, gardening is too damn hard sometimes!
All the old foliage on Mahonia nitens x eurybracteata was also wiped out by winter. 
One new stem survived the rats.
Okay... the table fungus in title, well it's a lot cuter than the damage left by rats. Although to be honest I fear I'm cursing myself by sharing photos in the same post where I'm talking about rats. Do rats eat mushrooms?
These photogenic fungus started showing up a couple weeks back and just keep getting bigger and multiplying.


Too bad they're not morels or something else easy to identify...

See what I mean... there are A LOT of them!


Here's a bonus late-addition to the post that seemed to fit the theme. See that healthy bunch of tetrapanax foliage? I picked it up off the sidewalk. I'm 90% sure the wind ripped it off (it was a very windy day), but there's always the chance it was squirrels.

There was a lot random tetrapanax die-back on my plants due to the winter weather madness and any new leaves was an exciting development, this is a sad thing. Before the wind event was over I also lost two substantial new stems on a Mahonia x media 'Marvel' and a branch of the Magnolia macrophylla. One step forward, two steps back.