Anna's Archives: The Pokeberry Episode

If you don't know what pokeberries are, these are pokeberries:

Don't they look delicious?  Don't you just want to pick off berry after delicious berry and pop it into you mouth?

Well, don't.  Settle down with a cup of hot tea and your favorite rock in your hand, listen to the imaginary fireplace roar, and hear my cautioning tale to the world's youth.

Once upon a time, I was four.  Or younger.  For the sake of argument, though, we're just going to call it four.  At my tender age, I was yet unused to the ways of poisonous berries masquerading as tempting little bite-size meals, and thus, as I wandered in the fresh air, treading my favorite paths with the sun and trees as my only witness, I happened upon a pokeberry bush and did not know of its deadly nature.  Hardly thinking--such was the foolishness of my youth!--I reached one plump, soft hand out to grasp that which was my downfall.

As I feasted upon those tender morsels, the eldest offspring of my parents caught a fear-filled glance of my gluttony and reported it to the aforementioned parents, whose loving and tender hearts were brimmed with terror at the fate which might befall their fifth female offspring.  For, being wise and full of years, they knew of the danger those harmless-appearing purple berries presented.

Gathering me up in their caring arms, they straightaway removed my from my deadly meal and returned me to our humble dwelling, where syrup of ipecac was administered to me by the steady hands of my maternal parent, her and my father's hope being that I would expel the poisonous berries from my young body in an upward lurch through my innards.

Their hope was not answered until two long, dreadful hours were passed, and as I sat in the tub commonly used for bathing, now used for waiting and toying with playthings, I felt the tug in my stomach, a fateful sign of what was to come.  That is, what was to come up.

Moral:  Don't eat pokeberries unless you have ipecac syrup on hand.  As you can see, I turned out fine, so no harm done.