A READER WRITES IN... I
WOULD LIKE TO WARN YOUR READERS
Many of us don’t like insects, especially in the house. So when I came across a product promising me “A year without Insects”. I thought my dreams had come true, however, in reality it turned into a nightmare I never hope to have to repeat nor wish anyone else to experience. Having bought the product and read the instructions, I proceeded to spray the “” around the entrances to my home believing I would soon no longer have to worry about the scampering of 6 or more legs invading my privacy. Sitting back I actually witnessed it doing its stuff and remember thinking ‘wow that spray is good.’ Little did I know how good. A couple of days after I had sprayed and in all honesty forgotten about it, I happened to notice one of my dogs licking the tiles around half a metre from one of the doors, at first it didn’t click, maybe I thought someone had spilt something there, but gradually I saw her moving closer and closer towards the doorway, till she was licking along the door bottoms length. Hurriedly I called her away and put furniture to stop her getting at the sprayed area. Licking her lips she appeared to be okay, but I thought to check the can and saw upon it 3 little pictures around 1 cm square, warning the contents were flammable, dangerous to the environment and an irritant. I then read the instructions again and saw that whilst it was dangerous to aquatic lifeforms and that you should avoid contact with eyes it didn’t say much else save it could affect the central nervous system and breathing but not how and by how much and certainly it didnt say it was dangerous to life. As the day wore on however, I noticed my dog becoming more and more agitated, the symptoms of which included her eating grass. “Upset tummy” thought I, “well that will teach her to lick the floor wont it. She need only be sick and she will feel better,” I concluded. Soon however, she was gobbling grass down like she was in a pie eating contest and she was going for the world record. She would eat grass
then be sick then eat some more, then be sick again, the cycle went on and on getting worse and worse. Whilst all the while she was smacking her chops and licking her lips as drool poured out. Determined not to panic I called the vet and asked for his advice, he asked if I could get down to his surgery, by this time it was nearly 9pm and it would mean an emergency call out, but seeing as she was obviously not feeling very well I bit the bullet and took her down. I fully expected the vet to give her a couple of jabs, either to make her sick or to calm her tummy down so she didn’t need to be sick and to be sent home with a firm ticking off about not letting her near areas that I had sprayed with bug spray. However, the two jabs was to be in fact four so he put an intravenous drip in place and we began to talk about the spray, he hadn’t heard of it or seen it so I pulled the can out of my bag and showed it to him, after reading it he asked to be excused, he was going to make a phone call. Before he left the room he switched on the A/C as my dog was panting a bit, (I have to admit I was feeling a little warm myself so didn’t complain). For a little while it seemed to help, but as the minutes passed she began to pant harder and harder, till she was wracked with the effort. Just as I was about to call back the vet he came back, in his hand yet more injections. He told me this was serious, she had ingested a poison for which there was no antidote but he would try to save her.
A very large, old, building was being torn down to make room for a new skyscraper. Due to its proximity to other buildings it could not be imploded and had to be dismantled floor by floor. While working on the 49th floor, two construction workers found a skeleton in a small closet behind the elevator shaft. They decided that they should call the police.
I was flummoxed, I honestly didn’t know where this had come from, I mean, it is a spray on sale for use in houses, surely there would be an antidote, you can’t sell something so dangerous and there not be? But you can, and they do. For four and a half hours my dog got worse and worse, her mouth (inside) was post box red and her tongue swelled up, the whites of her eyes went bloodshot and her breathing sounded as if she were breathing through an aqualung, all crackly and bubbly. She struggled to breathe, to remain conscious whilst all the while I begged her to keep fighting. Three times she suddenly stopped breathing the result of which forced us to slap her on the side and rub her chest (doggy CPR). She couldn’t stand, she couldn’t even lift her own head and all the while the vet Ernesto (Quattre Camins) tried to save her. He told me the spray has an effect on the central nervous system and the breathing and that it might be an idea if we avoided it coming into contact with our skin as for with animals there is no antidote for humans and he just didnt want to take any risks. In all it took nearly 6 hours of hard work on Ernesto’s part, a whole pharmacy it seemed of injections and a lot of praying on mine for her to be declared out of imminent danger. However, for 4 further days I had to watch her closely and take her back for more injections and saline drips to try and wash the poison out of her system. I nearly lost my dog just because I don’t want insects in my house. I would like to urge other animal owners to be very careful with this product and not to use it where their pets might gain access to it. This time I was lucky, my dog was lucky; but it could so have been a very different story and very nearly was.
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When the police arrived they directed them to the closet and showed them the skeleton fully clothed and standing upright. They said, "This could be Jimmy Hoffa or somebody really important." Two days went by and the construction workers couldn't stand it any more; they had to know who they had found. They called the police and said, "We are the two guys who found the skeleton in the closet and we want to know if it was Jimmy Hoffa or somebody important." The police said, "It's not Jimmy Hoffa, but it was somebody kind of important." "Well, who was it?""The 1956 Blonde National Hide-and-Seek Champion."
The Catalunya Chronicle - Issue 11 August 2010 - www.chroniccat.com - Page 6