Shots Across The Bow

The Perils of Poison Ivy

When I was a kid, poison ivy didn't bother me a bit. I remember one time our family was out on the lake, and we'd pulled into a cove to camp for the night. I found a nice spot under a bunch of trees where there was a lot of low undergrowth that made a really nice cushion under my sleeping bag. It wasn't until the next morning that I found out that the undergrowth was all poison ivy. I was sure that I would break out into the world's worst rash and sufffer the totures of the damned, but a week went by, and nothing.

I was immune! Superman of the plant kingdom; that was me. Kick your ball into the poison ivy? No problem; I'd leap right in and retrieve the ball, saving the day. Poison ivy couldn't get me.

Now I know better.

See, poison ivy is like an allergy; you have to be sensitized before it couses a reaction. It might not get you the first time, or the second, or the tenth, but eventually, it'll get ya.

Now, I get a rash if I look at the stuff.

And not just a mild rash with red skin and a small blister or two, but great big bulging blisters liberally covering the affected area of my skin. And how to describe the itch? It's like nothing else in the world. Mosquito bites aren't in the same league as this itch.

I think part of it is how sneaky that itch is. You can go for hours without even noticing it, then all of the sudden, one gentle brush of a shirt sleeve, or the soft touch of a bedsheet on the rash and it's an instant scratching frenzy.

You try to resist scratching, but it catches you off guard, and before you know it, you're ripping into flesh, trying to satisfy the chemically induced imperative to scratch till you draw blood.

And it feels so good!

Oh, sure, you try to control it; you try to be good. You start off just rubbing it.

"I'm not scratching it; I'm just rubbing it!" you tell yourself. But it's never enough. The poison is smarter than that. As you rub, it performs an unusual trick where it numbs the skin so you don't feel the rubbing while it intensifies the itch. Before long, you're 'rubbing' with enough speed and presure to wax an entire 1963 Cadillac Deville.

Fins and all.

"This isn't working," you tell yourself. "I have to scratch, but just scratch around the edges. I won't scratch the blisters." But the poison is still smarter than you are, and it moves the itch around, always where you aren't scratching. Like a skilfull inquisitor, it leads you on, tempting and tantalizing you into scratching just a little further, a little harder, and a little faster, until your will snaps, and you indulge yourself in an orgy of scratching that leaves you with tattered skin and a desire for a cigarette.

And you don't even smoke.

Now, here's an interesting fact about poison ivy that I'll bet you didn't know.

It only affects human and a few other higher primates. Now what the heck is up with that? Why would a plant evolve a defensive mechanism that only affects a few species? Particularly when the species it is defending against is a relative newcomer to the scene, evolutionarily speaking. What did we ever do to the ivy plant to deserve such special treatment? It's not like humans are any real threat to wipe out ivy. Heck, any plant that can grow on a brick wall is pretty much immune to anything we could throw at it, short of a thermonuclear holocaust, and I'm not sure that would work. If we ever do wipe ourselves out, the world will be inherited by rats, cockroaches, and poison ivy.

Oh yeah, and kudzu. But that's another story.

Posted by Rich at July 15, 2003 12:56 AM | TrackBack