There are some sad people around me. Dexter, the white, fluffy neighbourhood legend, died on Tuesday this week after ingesting rat poison. He was in the prime of his life.
I was reading the leaflet I’d removed from a bottle of cockroach poison I’d recently bought. You had to dilute it in litres of water and “rinse the container three times”. I wondered where one would flush that residue..
Down the drain, I suppose. Unless you know a special depot where you can take poisons for disposal and are willing to drive there. Most people flush the last bit of unused poison down the drain.
It makes its way into the sea. Every household in Cape Town has poisons in the garage or cupboard. Insect poison, snail poison herbicides for the weeds and rat poison. Usually, it has been used once or twice a few years ago and not again. (Not to mention varnish, paint thinners and the like).
I imagined every dwelling in Cape Town’s poison in the ocean, then the whole of South Africa and then the whole world’s poison being emptied or rinsed into the sea. The sea animals have nowhere to run and hide from it.
We are seeing behaviour changes such as the recent incident of a seal with brain damage from poisoning, charging and biting bathers.
It seemed insane to me that we all keep poison in our homes. I hadn’t needed the cockroach poison yet and it may be a long time until I do. I discovered via Google that while some poisons get weaker as they age, others become more potent and lethal.
I gave my bottle to our estate manager to keep in case somebody really needed to use it. Then, I got the answer! How about if every hardware or garden shop which sells poisons had a few dispensers for the surrounding community to borrow then return like a library book or video.
People from the area will have access to up to date poison when they need it, without the risks and responsibilities that come with having poison standing around for years at home.
A growing population equals more poison purchases. It is cruel to expect marine animals and birds to suffer more than they already are and surely eating fish could be one reason why we have disease?
We cannot rely on selling loads of poison to keep the wheels of our economies turning. This is not the solution. Sharing at your local store, is. One day we’ll look back with amazement at the times when we all kept toxic stuff in our homes and tossed it in the trash or flushed it down the drain.
I’ll swat the cockroaches with a flyswatter, then drop the phone book on them and leave it for a few days.