Wednesday 27 May 2009

There Were Rain Clouds In The Sky All Day,

so we had a day in on Tuesday, so no pictures today (cue roars of laughter and cries of shame!) but I could not stop thinking about a program the night before about old dogs livers being poisons to humans, well it appears as far as Huskies are concerned they are, even worse is the liver of a polar bear! but back to dogs, or at least Huskies, the first documented death due to vitamin A poisoning was Xavier Mertz, a Swiss scientist who died in January 1913 on an Antarctic expedition that had lost its food supplies and fell to eating its sled dogs, Mertz consumed lethal amounts of vitamin A by eating the dogs' livers, surviving him was Douglas Mawson, whose book, Home of the Blizzard, was the inspiration of the play on BBC Entertainment, but this is not the earliest known example, this danger has long been known to the Inuit and has been recognized by Europeans since at least 1597 when Gerrit de Veer wrote in his diary that, while taking refuge in the winter in Nova Zemlya, he and his men became gravely ill after eating polar bear liver, from the same report as far as polar bears are concerned, just 0.3 grams of the liver of the polar bear contains the upper intake level of vitamin A, if eaten in one meal, 30 to 90 grams is enough to kill a human being, or to make even sled dogs very ill, it appears that in the livers of Huskies, Polar bears and seals the Vitamin A is never disposed of it just builds up and up in concentration, so if you plan to go Arctic avoid their livers, also I hear that eating/drinking yellow or red snow is not a good idea! what I was also surprised to find out whilst looking at this is from the dogs perspective, walnuts, onions, caffeine and raw fish are potently lethal to dogs, so on to Tuesday evening and a double helping of The Tudors, stating at a more reasonable hour at 7 in the evening, followed by I, Robot staring Will Smith and then Alien vs. Predator staring lots of special effects, all at 720 kit-kats, then tea and biscuit's and off to bed!

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