Beauty Can Kill

While chatting with a bunch of likeminded pet people on Monday we were distressed to hear that a capybara that died from eating a small part of an Azalea bush. Like ferrets capybaras are exotics that many have not dealt with. You can read about the capybara here: story. The question was asked “Why don’t nurseries have warnings on toxic plants to warn pet owners.”

From the research I have done there are over 400 toxic plants to animals many are beautiful flowering plants that most of us have in our yards. A plant only has to cause some kind of upset to be put on the toxic list but many of these same plants are toxic to humans. The question then comes into play “How do we landscape our yards so they are both beautiful and safe for both our pets and our children?”
A lot of ideas were talked about during the chat and several seemed plausible and easy to do.

1.Blog about the plants indigenous to our area and link to each other’s blogs.
2.Create pdf file that can be distributed to nurseries.
3.Create a brochure for the area.
4.Talk to locally owned nurseries and see if they were willing to post a poster of toxic to pets/children plants.

If each of us did one of these four things we as a pet community could bring about a big change and maybe save the life of beloved pet whether they are a “Normal” or Exotic pet. We might even find some plants we never knew existed or help to bring back a plant native to the area we live in but the biggest reward would be the knowledge we gained from our research about potentially deadly plants that look so deceivingly beautiful.

Have a chittering good day,
Jo