My son found this on a hike. What is it? There was lots of it.
What kind of trees were around? I looks like a type of pine sap I use to fine this time of year as a kid. This was from tall long needled pines.
Is it hard? Soft? Sticky? Pliable? Stinky? Give us some adjectives here. At first glance, it looks like resin of some sort, or possibly amber (fossil resin).
Thread title edited to give some idea of what the question is about.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Good idea.
It’s soft and brittle like jello. It’s not sticky. It was found on a roadway in the woods, specifically in a mud puddle.
I suppose it could be sap of some type but the nearest trees were over 10 meters away.
Looks like that jelly-like fungus found on old tree stumps. Some type of Tremella?
What continent are you and your son on?
Could it be tree-ear mushroom?
That would be my guess, given the described consistency.
I think it’s called “fungus-among- us”.
I’m pretty sure it’s a fungus. I find them all the time on dead limbs and such in the woods.
Any UFO crashes in the neighborhood recently?
We live in Ontario.
“brittle like jello” is not a description that I understand very well. 
Sailboat
Canada or California?
It looks like a baby Cal Tiki.
I’m guessing he means it falls apart easily. This kind of fungus is very squishy and soft, kind of like raw bacon (not my best comparison, but it was the closest I could compare it to), but handles like gelatin would.
Remind me not to try the Canadian Jello.
I think the word you’re looking for is friable.
In what sense is Jello brittle? Are you making it with not enough water?