Y'all sound like a bunch of old women sitting around the kitchen swapping
folk tales.
Many members of the Anacardiaceae produce Urushiol which sometimes causes
contact dermatitis among those who are allergic to the substance. It is not
a contact poison, it is an allergen, the response to which is often
systemic. That is why blisters often pop up in places where the person could
not
have possibly have come in contact with the leaves, and why washing doesn't
help. By the time you start itching the problem has gone systemic and your
whole body is reacting.
Aside from poison ivy which grows damn near everywhere, there are two
species of Toxicodendron which are called poison oak, one of which grows in
the
east and one out west. Here in Florida we have Poison ivy (Toxicodendron
radicans), Poison oak (T. pubescens), and occasionally Poison Sumac (T.
vernix).
Some folks are allergic to other members of the Anacardiaceae such as
mangoes, but for the deluxe tour I recommend Poisonwood (Metopium toxiferum),
a
pretty small tree resembling the pigeon plum which is common throughout
the Caribbean.
I am generally not allergic to poison ivy and other such things and can
wade right through the stuff, but enough is enough. Once upon a time I landed
a contract to cut a nature trail around an uninhabited island in the
Bahamas. Poisonwood constituted something like a quarter of the vegetative
biomass of the island, and as mentioned is difficult to distinguish from
pigeon
plum. Bahamian "workers" are inert, so that meant I had to do all the work
of chopping and hauling while they stood around smoking dope and
complaining about having to be in the wood where they could fall victim to
either
snakes and Duppies (both imaginary) or poisonwood. On the leeward side the
trees grew about thirty feet tall which meant that logs had to be carried on
one's shoulders. The logs were of course dripping black poison which ran
down my sweaty neck. That was bad enough and by the third day I was starting
to have a generalized reaction. About that time the trail swung around to
the windward side where the trees were only four feet tall but still arm
thick. It was an absolutely impenetrable scrub that was impervious to even the
sharpest machete. Only a chain saw would work but there were several
complications. The Bahamians had destroyed the chainsaws by cutting into rocks
(they did this both out of stupidity and because they long ago learned that
if the tools were broken they could just stand there doing nothing).
Furthermore, to cut any of the gnarly stunted trees required crawling on one's
hands and knees (without knee pads) on the jagged karst in the hundred degree
heat. As a result, the urushiol vaporized by the dull chainsaw blade
blasted straight back into my face. That did the trick. After I was blinded a
Bahamian stepped forward out of perverse pride. After he went down another
tried. After that the whole crew was medivaced out by speedboat. It seems that
the poison concentration in the leaves and stems is much greater on the
windward side of the island. Despite all that I have reacted to urushiol only
once since.
I must share one more story about that trip. It was my habit to go far
ahead with my machete to scout the way and leave a trail for the "workers".
Invariably I would come back to find them sitting down smoking dope and
listening to some story being told by Mr. Fuzzy the crew chief (a fellow whose
350 lbs wife was eaten by a pack of wild dogs in the streets of Nassau). So
I came back to find the men sitting there laughing hysterically. I asked
what was so funny and was told, "Missa Boos Missa Fuzzy him find a ting
nobody can say what it is". Mr. Fuzzy might have been lazy but he did love to
lift up rocks to look for land crabs with which to make crab soup. In lifting
up a rock he had found something inexplicable. Now bear in mind that this
was an uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere, that the scrub is
effectively impenetrable, that the trail I was cutting did not follow any
preexisting path, and that there were millions of rocks. The men pointed to a
specific rock and asked, "Missa Boos what de ting neef dat rock?" I lifted the
rock to discover a pink gelatinous mass and poked it with some trepidation
then lifted it up to discover that it was a home made artificial vagina
cast in latex. I can only attribute it to the drug smugglers who had crashed
an airplane on the island and had apparently lived there for some time as
castaways using the wings of the crashed plane for shelter. It was a
disappointment that the bales were all empty.
Sleaze
