It was a beautiful day in Maine today.  Sunny, clear and 72 degrees; nothing like the cold fall weather we have been having.  To take advantage of the nice day, we decided to meet some of our homeschool friends at a local playground.

The kids, despite their age differences all played really well together.  Since this playground is completely surrounded by trees, shrubs and other greenry, a favorite pastime is making fairy houses.  In the past, the girls have used some (what we assumed were) wild grapes.  M, since he has never shown much interest in fairy houses only noticed the grapes today.  Would you like to guess what happened?

Yes, M ate some of the grapes.

Now, we were at the playground with Larissa and her two girls, and she, unlike me, tends not to be a worrier.  Her opinion was that he was probably okay and since he seemed just fine, I pushed it to the back of my mind and tried not to worry so much.

I started to worry about it again when we got home from the playground.  After consultation with another worrywart friend, and googling "wild grapes in Maine" and coming up empty handed, I decided it was time to call poison control.  I was fairly confident that they would assure me that everything was fine.

I was NOT expecting the nice man at the poison control office to tell me that sometimes other seriously toxic plants can mimic the appearance of wild grapes!  Plants that can cause high blood pressure, rapid heart rates, and sometimes death!  O!  M!  G!  His advice to me was to get a piece of the plant and have it identified.  If we didn't know exactly what it was, there was no way to tell me what problems may arise.

I quickly dropped A off at TKD and headed back to the playground, dragged the other 3 kids back to the bush, and tugged off a couple of good-size pieces including the actual "grapes".   Then the problem was finding a place that could identify it at almost 5:30 in the evening.  The poison control guy had suggested a plant store.  Uhhhhh, okay!  I went to our local Agway in hopes that since they sell plant supplies, they could be of some help.

Unfortunately The folks at Agway couldn't identify the plant.  They could, however, give me the name and address of a man who could.  They called ahead so that Mr. Johnston would expect me, and I got directions to his house.  Mr. Johnston met me outside, took one look at the plant and assured me that it is just wild grapes, will not cause lasting damage to M, and probably tasted like crap when he ate it!  Whew!  That was a relief!

Okay, so that wild goose chase ended happily, but how many more times will I have to call poison control before this child makes it to adulthood?  What will he eat next time that may be potentially fatal?  It is not as if I don't watch him!  But I never would have anticipated that he would find grapes growing on vines at the playground and think they were fair game!

Ahhh!  It probably doesn't bode well that I have poison control on speed dial does it?  I wonder how many times you can call them before they report you to CPS?

And just in case you are wondering, here is a picture of what M ate:

Looks like grapes to me!