A Little Different

I was watching one of the local kids go running up into the weeds near our housing. The tangle was nearly as tall as he was, and he was dressed for the heat in shorts and t-shirt. For some reason, it struck me that at least where I grew up in Maryland, running into that kind of weeds would be asking for an encounter with poison ivy or one of its relatives.

So I asked and everyone got round-eyed. Poison plants? How scary! Will they kill you? So I explained about poison ivy itches and swellings.

And then they reminded me and each other that while Japan apparently doesn't have poison ivy or similar irritants, they have poisonous snakes and millipedes (or maybe centipedes - way too many legs, brightly colored, and big. I've helped someone who had been bitten, and their foot swelled up for a couple of days. Evil!) I haven't encountered the snakes, but people say they are very poisonous, and a mere rumor of one earlier this summer sent the campus guards out combing through the field where someone said they had seen one. At least in Maryland, the rattlesnakes and such (cotton mouth?) were pretty much out in the woods, not down in the residential parts.

And I know I never heard of poisonous centipedes!