[lust4speed]

Only have poison oak in our area, but have quite a bit of it on the property. I was told that poison oak gets easier to catch every occurrence and I've pretty well proven that out. I was pretty immune to it until we did some clearing and burned piles of it, and the smoke gave me a bad case. It's really for me to catch it now and I don't like to even be in the proximity of it. I also learned that being up on the backhoe with the fine dust blowing around from dirt under the plants will get me and I never get off the tractor.

Worse thing that happened to us decades ago was my young daughter and a friend didn't know what it was and were playing in it pulling it out with their hands to make a clearing. Late that night she came into our room and said her face hurt. My wife switched on the light and screamed. The massive swelling in my daughter's face looked like the skin was just going to split open. Her eyes were swollen shut and it didn't even resemble her. That prompted an emergency run to the hospital and we were really frightened whether she was going to be alright. It took weeks for her to return to normal but no long term effects.