My neighbor had some succulent and it was growing in large blankets across her property. In fact little shoots of it would sometimes come up on my property. She encouraged me to take some and grow it. No warning was given to me. So I put a small bit in a part of my property and it grew over the summer to 18" square by 12" high. It was crowding the coral bells next to it so yesterday I went and cut it back. I may have gotten some of the milky white sap that came out of it on my hands. I knew that milky white latex sap is prolly not something I want on my skin so I tried to keep it off my skin. After I was done with my pruning I came inside, took the gloves off and washed my hands. Then I went and ate my subway sandwich. Two hours later at 10pm I got some slight burning around my mouth. It got worse 4/10 then worse 5-6/10. By 11:30 the pain was now at 8/10 and my entire face, cheeks, mouth area were on fire. I racked my brain of what it was thinking there was something on my sandwich or I had some sort of anaphalaxis to something I ate. Finally I retraced the night and googled "white sap" and found out that I had been exposed to Myrtle Spurge or Donkey Tail spurge.. "Euphorbia Myrsinitis." I drove to the ER and they didn't know much about it. They gave me Oxycodone and had no idea what to apply topically to help it. I went home and the burning was still persistent. I took one oxy and that helped bring the pain down so I could sleep. The second day(today) as I write this the burning pain as finally subsided to just a very fried/burnt feeling on my face. Spurge is highly toxic and should be avoided in all gardens If you have this plant on your property remove it by digging underneath it and lifting it into a lined trash can. Do not break the plant up because the milky sap is a natural latex resin that carries a cytotoxin. Cytotoxins are in venomous spiders and snakes. The sap burns the skin far worse than OC/Mace/Pepper spray and takes days to go away. I got Tecnu poison ivy extreme care and oxies from the doctor for the pain. This plant is no joke. It's killed dogs, cats and children. It should not be on your property! And oddly enough it's common around central oregon where I live. It's considered a noxious weed as it grows quickly and is difficult to remove. EXTREME WARNING:!!!!! The neurotoxin of these plants is a Resiniferatoxin or RTX, and is very, very, dangerous. It is an extremely irritant agent and is the most pungent/spicy substance in the world, much more than ANY chili pepper where the spicy agent is the Capsaicin of 16 million Heat Units. Indeed this oleoresin is so powerful that it destroys the nervous pain receptors for ever! It has more than 15 Billion Scoville Heat Units and is 1000 times hotter than Capsaicin. TREATMENT: If you get this on your skin use a dish soap to wash the affected area continuously for a minmum of 30 minutes. Try not to rub the area much, rather splash the dish soapy water on affected area. The idea here is to let the dish soap break down the oleoresin which is a medium for the cytotoxin. The oleoresin is most irritating to mucus membranes and the sensitive skin around the genitals, mouth, lips, ears, nose and of course eyes. If you get this in your eyes flush your eyes with tap water immediately several times then get to the ER as fast as possible. If treated quickly one can avoid permanent damage to the eye. On skin the pain usually goes away in 48-72 hours. The pain can be minor to excruciating depending on how much got on you and where the area was affected. Dispose of all clothing, gloves, that have the resin on it. Wash all tools, garden clippers, shovels, etc that may have come in contact with the resin in alcohol. This chemical is no joke! It is one of the most poisonous resins on the planet. Most people are highly allergic to it and can even get severe welts/blisters from contact with it. If exposed to your skin in any significant way seek emergency medical help. There is not much in the way of neutralizing the after effects of the pain. Once the resin is gone from the skin by using the sudsy dish soap method and you have cleansed the area many times, relief can only come from narcotics like vicodin or hydrocodone and then you just wait till the inflammation subsides. Some suggest that aloe vera, calamine, and benadryl help relieve the burning to a minor extent. PRECAUTIONS: If you insist on growing myrtle spurge, donkey tail spurge, Euphorbia Myrsinitis then never use a weedwhacker anywhere near it. Wear disposable latex gloves, eye protection and protective clothing when handling or trimming it. You should not have this plant anywhere remotely around pets or children or adults who are unaware of it's extreme toxicity. Some report that just brushing the plant with bare skin is enough to create a painful reaction while others will not react unless the abundant sap touches bare skin. Extreme caution needs to be maintaned so that you do not have secondary or even tertiary contact with the resin in it's milky state or dried state as you can even get burns from the sap if it's on clothing or on tools and then is transfered to the face, genitals or mucus membranes. It is highly advised to keep this plant out of the yard altogether!! Simply exposing the resin to the air in confined spaces like greenhouses can expel enough toxicity into the air so that it burns the mucus membranes and the lungs. These plants should never be cut or trimmed in a confined area. DEADLY CAUTION! Never ever burn poisony Ivy, Poison Oak, Stinging Nettles, Euphorbia or spurge. You can release the toxins into the air and destroy your lungs. People have died from trying to eradicate these plants by burning them!! Eradicate these plants by wearing protective gear and putting them into lined trash cans and carefully disposing of these plants so that others are not affected.

Good morning Doubting Thomas, The Birdwatcher's Digest article is interesting, and the picture is so upsetting to see. In our yard, I have seen praying mantids nibbling away at dead frogs or small dead birds, particularly hummers and finches. I cannot verify that they killed the frogs and birds themselves, but they were preying upon them. This type of activity has been most common here where we live in HORRIBLE grasshopper years. My theory is that, when all my farming and ranching neighbors go nuts constantly spraying broad-spectrum insecticides, these insecticides kill off enough bugs that those which remain must eat prey which they might not otherwise eat. I have a hummingbird feeder hanging right outside my kitchen window, which enables me to keep an eye on that feeder. Some years, I have to go outside and literally 'rescue' a hummer that a mantid is trying to attack. The mantid will sit on top of the feeder and wave its arms at the hummer. I am not sure if the mantid is trying to grab the hummer, or knock it away from feeder or what. I 'rescue' the hummer by chasing it away from the feeder long enough for me to kill the mantid. For some reason, the mantids LOVE to sit on the hummingbird feeders. I have seen 2 or 3 mantids 'fight' for possesion of a hummingbird feeder. Since moving to the country almost a decade ago, I have been somewhat shocked to see what a 'dog-eat-dog' world exists in the natural world. I mean, I knew all about the food chain.....but seeing everything eat everything else on a daily basis really opened my eyes to how 'violent' the natural world is. For what it is worth, I tend not to believe this kind of thing unless I see it with my own eyes, so I understand your doubt. I also have cats and chickens who hang out around the pond and catch and eat frogs. I never knew either one of them would eat frogs until I saw it happen. At least it explains why my big back cat is SO big....and, also, it explains where all the frogs are disappearing too. Want to see something fun.....watch a couple of chickens fight over a frog! Dawn

re: smell. The first time we toured, the rugs were still wet from being cleaned and there was a candle burning. We did note an odor and asked because the seller disclosure checked pet stains but did not list more specifics in the required box. We were told they had big collies and they were very dog smelly dogs. The second time, we noted the odor and also noted a mattress upstairs were a small child slept was urine stained, so we attributed the smell to an incontinent child. The sellers refused to leave the house before close and we did not have an opportunity to tour the house empty prior to close. Had we had that opportunity, we would have noted the smell remained, and was actually worse once their things were out and candles weren't burning, etc. Upon sending photos to the RA, we learned the family confessed to knowledge the dogs urinated in the home. A neighbor was even aware of it .... So, we are just saving receipts and will explore our options. There are other things -- they removed television mounts from the walls, took a basketball hoop bolted to cement in the ground, removed other items that were screwed or bolted into walls.

Continued; and oops, I thought I was in appliance forum, sorry. Overall far more important: the KA glasstop burners were attached with an outrageously bad design of two screws. Until recently, I had assumed the attachment screws were part of the burner sealing for flame-air mixture control, but now realizing that my new burners (as with other cooktops that I recently observed) are not attached, but only rest on the surface, it becomes clear that the screws were for grounding to allow the ignitors to function. At first, these screws were easily removed for the initial orifice modifications and occasional under burner cleaning. However after a year or so, they began to tighten up. I complained and got replacement screws from KA, but they seemed to be different threads. I complained some more, but no other solution was provided and eventually all but one burner head screws became frozen. No under burner cleaning became possible and the cooktop looked bad. Then the ignitors began to fire randomly and I realized I was forced to get the burners off. I actually got lucky with my first attempt and got one burner off by drilling out just the heads of that burner. That should have allowed me to use vice grips to grab and unscrew the rest, but they tore off and yet were too hard to easily drill out or set up for ‘easy-out’ complete removal. The luck was that this pounding around (or choice of burner) cleared up the ignitor arcing. Assuming the ignitors would eventually act up again, I attempted further better centered drill press removal of burners, but apparently put too much pressure on the glass and broke it necessitating the purchase of the new, cheaper, superior, non-glass presumably unbreakable cooktop. That KA glasstop was a total POS from start to finish.