Why are people always telling me not to eat the poinsettia?
“Don’t!” they exclaim. “It’s poisonous!”
I mean, I know. It know it’s poisonous and everything. Or, rather, I’ve heard it is. Or that it might be. The truth is I don’t actually know whether it is poisonous or not, but I do know “they” have always said so. It could be bullshit. It just so happens that I’ve also heard it’s definitely not, so who's to say? I’ve heard that full-grown people have nothing to worry about, but it will sure as shootin’ kill your dog (an idiom which has never seemed quite so apt to me before). Or off your cat. Or something.
But why do these well-meaning interjectors always feel the need for telling me? I mean, have they seen me running around chewing on greenery?
“Well, no,” someone once explained. “But if it breaks, and you get that white stuff on your hand or something – you shouldn’t, you know, lick it off.”
Oh, sure. I see. That makes much more sense. Because what I usually do when some random plant oozes it sticky sap on my dainty digits, is: I lick it off.
And then I spend the next three weeks seeing elves and hearing sleigh bells everywhere I turn.
Ooohhh… Pretty colors...
Hey, now I think I understand what would possess a person to put those light-up wind-socks out on their front lawn!
I think I see the penguin moving...
Friday, December 28, 2007
Poinsettious
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5 comments:
Dont eat yellow snow either.
Okay. Thanks for the tip.
Rats.
No, no.
Pee.
"It's a testament to the persistence of myths," says Paul Bachman, marketing chairman of the Society of American Florists (SAF). "Poinsettias simply are not toxic. That was proven 23 years ago in scientific tests and we want to set the record straight."
In fact, no other consumer plant has been as widely tested as the poinsettia. Researchers at Ohio State University (OSU) have measured the effects of ingesting unusually high doses of all parts of the plant (including the leaves, stems and sap) and found the plant to be non-toxic. According to POISINDEX (R), the information resource used by the majority of U.S. poison control centers, a 50-pound child would have to eat more than 1.25 pounds of poinsettia bracts (500 to 600 leaves) to exceed the experimental doses that found no toxicity.
Thanks Mom! But what about cats? And yellow snow?
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