----- Original Message -----
From: "ginny wilken"
>Assuming we might also be
> affected by these toxins, I'd like to know what, exactly, the nature of
the
> macadamia nut poison is. I don't give them to my dog, but still eat them
> myself

I'm occasionally perplexed by this same question of why something is toxic
to one species but not others.  Case in point, avocados are toxic/deadly to
some parrots.  My best bird friend Buster likes to graze from my salad
plate, and I'm glad I learned this early on because I surely would have
offered him some of the deadly green fruit.  Maybe it's poisonous to him
because he's African and avocados aren't, or are they?

The wild birds in my backyard feast on things I can't--e.g., the luscious
looking purple poke berries.

And bracken fern will do a baaaad number on a cow, but it's considered to be
a human gastronomic delicacy.

And from H.D. Thoreau (Journal, Sept. 1, 1859):  "You must be careful not to
eat too many nuts. I one winter met a young man whose face was broken out
into large pimples and sores, and when I inquired what was the matter, he
answered that he and his wife were fond of shagbarks, and therefore he had
bought a bushel of them, and they spent their winter evenings eating them,
and this was the consequence."

But pigs can eat shagbark hickory nuts w/o getting porker pimples.

Theola