Terror on the Toilet

  LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

What happened to the girl I used to know?

You let your mind out somewhere down the road.

--Don’t bring me down, The Electric Light Orchestra

I just returned from a refreshing week of vacation.  I saw 11 states and a myriad of bathrooms ranging from the good, to the bad, to one that made my five year-old son break down in tears.

My quadriceps still ache from hovering over toilet seats that I found less than inviting to my lily-white loins.

So this week for Sunday myth busting, I veer from folklore myth to urban legend.  Because before I invest in this device, I have to know:  

Can you really get a disease from a toilet seat?

First of all, a toilet seat, or any other hard and non-living object, is an inhospitable environment for most organisms, viral and bacterial.  If dry, most organisms will die within minutes of being left without their host.  Even the very contagious parasitic diseases like crabs or scabies will die within 24 hours and are unable to adhere to the smooth surface.  An added bonus is that they are visible to the naked eye. 

But what about the wet toilet seat?  I guess the follow up question is “wet with what?”  Urine is actually a sterile fluid.  But in other liquid suspensions, theoretically, things could live a little longer.  One study showed that gonorrhea in secretions lived for 2 hours on a toilet seat.  Herpes virus for four.

Ew.

But before you place an order for the Sanicone, let’s talk about the joy of skin. Unbroken human skin is a remarkable defense against germs.  Even if you touched a herpes blister directly, the likelihood of transmission would be nil without a break in your skin.  So sitting on a toilet seat, even a wet one, may make you nauseated, but won’t leave you with lasting illness.  But what if it was blood on the seat?  Well, I would hope most would back away from a toilet seat covered in blood but in the heat of the moment, things happen.  However, the CDC in its brochure on blood exposure relates that there is no known risk for Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, or HIV transmission from blood exposures to intact skin.

In fact, there are very few proven case reports of STDs transmitted via toilet seat--none for herpes, HPV (the virus that causes genital warts) or HIV.  Two case reports of possible toilet transmission of gonorrhea have been documented--one in 1939 from two patients in a hospital sharing the same urinal (one was infected) and another of an 8 year-old girl using an airplane toilet.  She wiped visible purulent fluid from the seat and then cleaned herself with the same hand.  Which is an epic fail of Bathroom 101.

In 1979, two researchers published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine called The Gonoccocus and the Toilet Seat.  Sort of like The Princess and The Pea, only a totally different sort of mattress problem.  The study authors found that as soon as the organism dried out, it was dead.  But what about that two hours that it took to dry?  That is what is called theoretical risk.  This is where laws of transmissability of disease come into play.  In order to spread disease, two basic things are necessary:  

#1 Enough germs to spread the disease (i.e. the inoculum) 

#2  A way to get into the genitourinary system, the bloodstream, or other orifice. 

This NEJM study is a perfect example of #1.  The authors took cultures from 72 public restrooms and found no gonorrhea present.  Moreover, 38 attempts to culture a toilet in a venereal disease clinic also revealed no STDs.  The study authors concluded that the toilet seat was not a viable mode of transmission, largely due to lack of a significant inoculum.

To address #2, the basic use of a toilet seat comes into play.  In other words, the areas that carry contagion are not necessarily those areas in direct contact with the seat.  I don’t know how you use the toilet, but I try not to rub my naughty bits all over in wild abandon on an unfamiliar toilet seat.  Assuming that your skin is intact where it is in contact with the seat, there is very little possibility of disease transmission.  

Even Dr. Abigail Salyers, the former president of the American Society for Microbiology has said, “To my knowledge, no one has ever acquired an STD on the toilet seat -- unless they were having sex on the toilet seat!”  To which I issue a desperate plea to the masses (and pop music icons):

Those scenes in J.R. Ward’s novels are fiction.  Sex in a public bathroom is NOT hot.

What’s more likely to get you in a public bathroom are diseases spread by your hands--influenza, streptococcus, staphylococcus, bacteria that cause diarrhea, and hepatitis A.  But these things are far more likely to show up on the counters, faucets, and door handles. Microbiologists have found that steering wheels have 100 times as many bacteria per square centimeter than a toilet seat does.  Still, I guess if you touched the toilet seat, then ate a bag of Cheetos (you have to lick your fingers with those things), badness could happen.  But if your immune system is healthy and you employ simple hand washing, the likelihood of transmission is minimal.

And what about those toilet seat covers?  Peace of mind only.  And useless if the toilet seat is wet.  Which is why the Maine legislature refused to make toilet seat covers mandatory in public restrooms in 2009.

My next road trip I will plop down free of worry.  You, too, can rest assured that you won’t contract a disease from a toilet seat.  However, snakes in a toilet bowl are a completely different story.

            Carpet python found in a Townsville, AUS toilet.

                            Always check the bowl.    

I need some focus.

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

If I could hold them in my hand, I'd make them understand

I'm not a haunted mind

I'm not a thoughtless kind

--Late at Night, Buffalo Tom

It's the last day of my vacation, and I am trying to focus.  

I have a cup of coffee, a bottle of diet coke, a sweating glass of unsweetened tea, and some LaCroix coconut sparkling water to accommodate any and all beverage desires.  I have snacks, ranging from the salty to the sweet.  The bathroom is just around the corner, with its pristine and inviting cushioned toilet seat.  I will need it soon.

Supper’s in the crock pot and the water logged meat needs no attention for another three hours.  Kids are at day care.  Hubs is killing insects out at the farm.

Yet I stare at my manuscript, mind blank except for a nagging voice that tells me I should go clean out my underwear drawer, because that may help me fill this plot hole.  As sick as it sounds, cleaning and organizing things is my guilty procrastinating pleasure.  There's nothing like alphabetized CDs and a color coded closet to soothe my aching prefrontal cortex.

Perhaps my home needs feng shuied?  The flow of creative energy is stifled, I know it.  I should shampoo the carpets; move the couch.  Damn, these seaweed snacks are surprisingly tasty.  If I do Kegels, will that increase the duration of "pee-free" periods?

JULES!  FOCUS!

In my daytime job, I am involved in the quality improvement drive in healthcare.  One thing that comes up over and over with medical errors is the tendency of humans to become so absorbed in a task that they miss other vital issues happening simultaneously.  They call it selective attention--and this is a little video to exemplify it:

T

So that makes me think. . .

Maybe I'm being too focused on being focused.  Or I need to feed my muse some bananas.

What do you do when you need to focus?

I've been Liebstered!

LYRIC O' THE DAY:
Shout when you wanna get off the ride
--Sour Cherry, The Kills

I was Liebstered this weekend.  And no, that’s not a position from the German version of the Kama Sutra or something that needs antibiotics to be cured.  It’s a bit of blog love passed to me by the fabulously sublime Suze over at Girl Wizard.  Suze has become my one-stop shop for finding the beauty in things mundane and re-examining this thing we call life.  Beware, she'll make you think.

So what does Liebster really mean?  It comes from German and there are multiple translations, ranging from favorite to dearest to sweetheart. . .and that gave me the biggest warm and fuzzy.  This award is meant to give the blogger with less than 200 followers a little spotlight.  It's like getting a virtual Valentine, without the groping.  Although technically, you still have to put out. . .as in blogging posts and such, of course.  

                   Digression:  I called my kids liebsters all 

                   night, until my four year old emphatically 

                   told me he was no lobster.  

Now I pass the Liebster to five other bloggers who have made my life a little more entertaining.  They’re welcome to give some crustacean love to another five bloggers if they desire:

Chandara Writes. Love her horror/thriller fixation.

Laila Knight.  Writing fantasy with a sense of humor.

LAGEOSE.  Dry and evil wit--and nothing is sacred.

Tara Tyler.  A writer and a poet.

Christine Murray.  A writer who has room in her heart for more than words.

Buried Alive as a Voodoo Zombie

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

Defunct the strings of cemetery things.

With one flat foot on the Devil’s wing.

--Living Dead Girl, Rob Zombie

It’s Sunday Myth Busting time again, and this week takes me to another horror movie icon--the zombie.

Probably the first literary nod to the zombie was in 1929 with William Seabrook’s The Magic Island.  This sensational account of Seabrook’s experiences in Haiti is felt to be one of the first places the word “zombi” appeared in print.  But it wouldn’t be until the Night of the Living Dead’s debut in 1968 before the classic zombie movie changed the undead forever.  

Currently, zombie love is everywhere.  Even the CDC got into the craze.  Modern zombies are created by things like radiation exposure, parasitic diseases, and viruses.  The lurching, brain-eating zombie of George Romero’s time has been replaced with cunning creatures that can outrun you, like in 28 Days Later.  But did you ever wonder if zombies could be real?

It’s time to take a trip into Voodoo lore.  Voodoo grew from roots in the West African religion Vodun.  The slave trade brought Vodun overseas and it is still heavily present in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as well as in America in the deep South.  Vodun values a supreme being, but has no single religious text.  It centers around spirituality and sacrifice, as well as beliefs in dark and light magic.  If a person commits a moral violation according to Vodun, they may be targeted by a Vodun sorcerer called a Bokor.  A Bokor can capture the soul and control the physical form as punishment.  

                     Tah-dah, you’ve created a zombie.

There have been many accounts of zombies existing, especially in Haiti, which seems to be zombie central.  Up to a thousand new cases of zombification are reported each year there.  However, actual case studies have revealed many of these “zombies” to be people suffering from neurologic or psychiatric disease, such as catatonic schizophrenia, anoxic brain injury, and fetal alcohol syndrome. 

The most controversial case of a “real zombie” was a Haitian man named Clairvius Narcisse.  Narcisse walked into Haiti’s Albert Schweitzer Hospital in 1962 spitting up blood and suffering from kidney failure and high fevers.  He was proclaimed dead by two U.S. trained physicians two days after his admission and buried by friends and family.  Eighteen years later, a man claiming to be Narcisse appeared with a story that he was resurrected from the dead three days after his burial in 1962 by a Bokor who kept him as a zombie slave.  Unfortunately, the resurrected Narcisse was never proven to be related to the original, although he gave detailed descriptions of childhood memories that supposedly only Clairvius would know.  Narcisse claimed his brother called for his zombification after a dispute over family land, but by that time, his brother was dead and that story could not be validated.  Without DNA evidence, many believe this is a case of mistaken identity or a fraud perpetrated to swindle the family of the real (and dead) Clairvius Narcisse.

When Harvard anthropologist Wade Davis heard of the story, he went to Haiti looking for answers.  He published his accounts in the book The Serpent and The Rainbow in 1985, asserting that the myth of the Haitian zombie could be explained by pharmacology and the use of certain psychoactive plants.

In Davis’s book, he described a substance made by Bokors--coupe poudre or “zombie powder”.  The victim of zombification was exposed to the powder, which upon analysis was found to contain toxins, human remains, and other noxious items like ground glass.  One of the toxins that was consistently present was something called tetrodotoxin, a paralytic neurotoxin that several marine animals (like puffer fish and harlequin toads) use to subdue their prey.  Initial symptoms include numbness of the lips followed by dizziness, incoordination, tremor, difficulty breathing, respiratory failure and seizures.  Coma and death can occur in as little as 18 minutes.  At sub-lethal doses, the body is essentially paralyzed--including the muscles that control breathing and heartbeat.  The victim may appear dead, but is lucid and aware of their surroundings, unable to communicate.

        There’s no antidote.  That’s some bad, bad sushi.

If the victim is not examined thoroughly, it could be possible to believe they were dead.  Of course in the modern era, people who die are generally embalmed.  Exsanguination and organ removal pretty much guarantees the dead are dead.  But we’re talking Haiti in the 1960s, and bodies were not always embalmed before burial.  So it’s possible that after a pseudo-death, a victim could be buried alive.  Now on to Davis’s zombie resurrection.

The victim is retrieved from the grave by the Bokor and given another concoction made from the “devil’s cucumber”--a species of plant that contains atropine and scopalamine--chemicals known as anticholinergics.  These substances cause the heart to race, the blood pressure to rise and may produce such marked dilation of the pupils that the victim has painful photophobia.  Other neurologic effects include a lurching gait, delirium, psychosis, and amnesia that can last for several days.  Interestingly, “devil’s cucumber” is also known as jimson weed or locoweed here in Nebraska, and occasionally people will ingest it for its hallucinogenic effects.  Unfortunately, too much may be deadly, causing seizures or kidney failure.  To keep a zombie docile, they would have to be redosed frequently.

So on to myth busting.  The effects of tetrodotoxins occur within six hours and by twenty hours at the latest.  If the person survives 24 hours, they should recover.  Paralysis generally affects the diaphragm, the big muscle that makes you breath.  Slowing the respiratory rate to such a speed where medical personnel could not detect it would also mean marked decrease of oxygen to the brain.  Most people would die if this condition persisted for any significant length of time.  But for sake of argument, say the “deceased” was raised within a couple hours.  Even then, such oxygen deprivation would most certainly result in marked brain damage.  Which, depending on whether you feel zombies are a physical or psychological being, could give some validity to the myth.

Davis was immediately called out by the scientific community because he could not validate the effect of his zombie powder on rat models.  Most of his samples of zombie powder had little if any tetrodotoxin in them, which he attributed to different mixtures and potential loss of the toxin during analysis.  In addition, his methods of investigation (which included exhuming the body of a child to make a zombie powder) were considered less than ethical.  Davis responded that the pharmacology was only part of the mystique of the zombie; there had to be a strong cultural belief that would make a person believe in the possibility of becoming undead, and that belief alone could be enough to produce a zombie state.

In Narcisse’s story there was also a flaw--he claimed to have been fed a salt-free diet for his zombie years.  In folklore, if a zombie is fed salt, they will awake.  Unfortunately, humans need salt, and without it will die a very real death.  This was actually a method of torture and execution in the middle ages.

So to sum up, there are pharmacologic agents that could be used to debilitate someone to the point where they may be confused with the dead by a layperson.  And in societies where there are not official rules for handling a corpse, being buried alive could happen.  But the human body is unlikely to withstand several hours of oxygen deprivation that would occur with the use of these agents.  The use of the devil’s cucumber over time would also lead to significant morbidity and likely mortality, making resurrection as one of the movie-style zombies that George Romero made famous impossible.  

It seems this myth is dead wrong.

Top Ten Things Learned on My Family Vacation (and it's not over yet. . .)

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

She is the substance of my dreams, a spectra in the wind

--Psychomania, The Damned

Ah, vacation.  In my mind’s eye, gentle waves lick the shore of a sugar-sand beach.  I hold an umbrella topped concoction in one hand, a romance novel with a cover celebrating man nipple in the other.  

I’m set to recharge my inner gypsy.

Hubs and I haven’t had an official getaway for over five years--since back in the B.C. era (Before Children).  But this week, we packed up the cooler, a pile of electronic toys to amuse and delight the senses of little boys, and enough inflatable beach gear to make the Macy’s Thanksgiving day sponsors shudder with envy.

We’re on vacation.   

However, to get to the beach from my beloved landlocked home requires a trek of Griswold style proportions.  I have traversed eight states in four days.  Which translates to about twenty-three hours of driving/riding so far.  Time in a confined space, especially when any minute, a hard turn could result in being crushed by six boxes of Capri Sun, a Nike bag filled with coloring books and a boogie board, will teach you a lot about yourself.  

For instance, I can’t read in a car.  Gives me a raging headache.  And despite a fashionable neck pillow in the shape of a giant letter “C” I am unable to sleep bolt upright in the passenger seat of a Jeep with questionable shocks.  Hubs, being the self-appointed driver, is not much of a conversationalist.  He grips the steering wheel white-knuckled as dually trucks with naked lady mud flaps and those obnoxious rubber testicles hanging from their back axles try to kill us.  That means I’m forced to entertain myself. 

So around hour eleven, delirium set in, along with ass numbness.  In retrospect, they could have been one and the same.  I had a vision, and here it is:

Top Ten things learned on my family vacation (and it’s not over yet. . .)

10.  A gym membership costs about $30 a month.  A good pair of running shoes about $100.  But the quadriceps strength to hover over a truly disgusting bathroom toilet in an Oklahoma truck stop is freaking priceless.  I knew I was doing those lunges for something.

9.  Twelve hours of SpongeBob Squarepants sends me into a near homicidal rage.  If I ever find you, you moronic yellow cleaning implement, I will scrub every toilet from here to Pensacola with you and laugh at your screams.  And that goes for your little starfish, too. 

8.  I am a goddess of cougar proportions to redneck adolescents.  I know this because a toothless dude in the gas station winked at me as his mom chain-smoked in their Reliant K-car outside.  I was wearing a tank top, flip flops, and what was left of a bag of Doritos.  Hubs was curiously not threatened.

7.  If you sit long enough in one position, your entire lower body will go numb.  Do NOT attempt to shake out the pins and needles while in the passenger seat because your husband will scream at you to sit back down, truckers will honk at you, and the Louisiana State Patrol will not understand the need to restore circulation to the lady parts.

6.   After sixteen hours in a car, you don’t notice there’s blood on the door of your hotel room until it’s way too late.  Hubs tried to reassure me that it was just ketchup, but I know better, the splatter pattern was all wrong.  I didn’t bring my gun, but at least I had my bed bug spray.  Actually, I may be more scared of the bed bugs.  

5.  I have the bladder of a hamster.  There’s a lot of things I will do, but peeing in a Big Gulp cup at 70 mph because Hubs doesn’t want to exit the interstate is not one of them.  I still have some pride.

4.  Slim Jims and Pixie Sticks make a poor substitute for a meal.  When mixed with a Red Bull and E-Z Cheez, a vision from the spirit world will visit you on a desolate Oklahoma highway, precisely at the same moment the radio station plays that song by Europe for the twenty-third time.  Then again, it could have been a Chupacabra.  They love hair metal.

3.   After you commune with God via Pixie Sticks, Satan will communicate with you in a different manner via your bowels.  That one won’t be near as pleasant, and will occur just when you have left the most pristine restroom of the journey.  You will be forced to share a two holer with a one-armed dude named Jo-Bob at a truck stop in Mississippi who will tell you about the joys of catfish noodling.

2.   Hubs finds joy in posting vile vacation photos of me on Facebook with cute little tags, like “Mommy drooling” or “My beautiful wife with a bacon mustache.”  But revenge is a dish best served in a Big Gulp cup.  And he thought it was just old Mountain Dew.

1.  There is a wandering tribe of porn dependent interstate travelers that need an adult novelty store every ten miles.  Several thousand square feet of prime billboard space is dedicated to advertising the carnal delights.  Then again, maybe the dude beside you on I-10 is just buying that blow up doll to fool the people in the HOV lane. 

Happy Friday!  And for all you traveling this summer, hope you have a safe and inspiring journey.

The Vampire meets the Academic

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

I’ll have you, and own you

Be hard and cold to you

I’ll be your dark angel

I’ll be your worst nightmare

--Vampyre Erotica by Inkubus, Sukkubus

Welcome to what I hope becomes a regular installment on the blog--Sunday Myth Busting.  I’ve always been a fan of folklore--there are so many fantastic tales that shaped many of my favorite novels.   However, I admit that this mythic mission came up because I was watching a rerun of CSI, not because I was pouring over classic literature.  But I do find inspiration in all things Grissom:

Vampires, whether you like them gnarled and ugly or muscled and sparkly, are one of those cultural icons that are immediately recognizable.  It’s difficult to really pinpoint the origin of the vampire myth, as there is folklore about the undead in all cultures.  Some believe that Cain was the first of all vampires, and his children then populated the world.  Other vampire myth started as an explanation for paranormal activity.  The upir of Russia and k’uei of China actually took root in tales of poltergeists and incubi.  The notion of a reanimated corpse with a dark soul was popularized by Slavic lore, and by the 1700s, the word “vampyre” entered the English lexicon.  For the Slavs, vampires were believed to be the result of not tending to the dead correctly, thereby tainting the soul or allowing a wicked soul to possess the body.  Vampires could also be those who died violently or before their time.  Their souls could not rest, and sought to continue with the life taken from them by feeding from the living.  In fact, Romanian lore described vampires shape-shifting into butterflies (not bats), which represented the soul connection.  

Could Eric Northman really morph into........

Now I know where the sparkly comes from!  Butterflies are pretty!

Whatever the origin, the vampire has become a pop culture craze, with new myths taking root via fiction and movies.  Even academics have gotten into the debate, and that--in combination with my CSI rerun--led me to my myth in need of busting.  Back in the 80s, a biochemist by the name of David Dolphin proposed in a paper for the American Association for the Advancement of Science that vampires may have actually been people suffering from a disease called porphyria.  Porphyrias are a group of rare hereditary blood diseases in which the individual lacks one of the enzymes necessary to produce heme, a component of hemoglobin and blood cells.  Without these enzymes, the chemical precursors to heme build up and cause variety of symptoms.  Patients suffer from abdominal pain and skin rashes, as well as neurologic and psychiatric manifestations, including seizures or frank psychosis.

The “scientific” basis for Dolphin’s assertion came from a few observations about these patients: 

1.  Porphyria victims are exceedingly sensitive to sunlight, and exposure can produce severe burns and even scar.

2.  Facial skin is very friable and fragile, the lips and gums stretch and thin out, allowing the teeth to project.  The gums can become quite red and the teeth themselves may have a red brown stain.

3.  Traditionally, porphyria was treated with ingestions of animal blood and organ meat.

4.  Garlic causes excessive heme production and would make porphyria worse--thus the garlic aversion.

Unfortunately, Dr. Dolphin might have been better suited for a career in fiction.  Vampire scholars--and yes, they do exist--were quick to point out that the whole sunlight plus vampire equals fiery inferno was not in traditional vamp folklore nor in pre-20th century vampire literature (i.e. Dracula).  It seems to have come on the scene as a creation of the movies in 1922’s Nosferatu.  

Also, the porphyrias are a set of 8 different types of disease, and no one type has all of these symptoms.  Drinking blood would do nothing for people with this disorder; the chemicals needed are destroyed by the digestive process.  Hence my issue with CSI, in which the episode claimed that a serial murderess had porphyria and was cannibalizing her victims to self-medicate.  

As of yet, no medical condition has been described to explain vampirism.  And David Dolphin (as well as Grissom) inflicted a lot of unfair scrutiny on people with a rare and often devastating disease.

What are some of your favorite myths?  Are any rooted in fact?

Colloquial Conundrum Contest

LYRIC O' THE DAY:
Sleep delays my life.
--Get Up, REM


It’s been an amazing few weeks of being a newbie blogger.  I’ve had a blast meeting so many talented and fascinating people.  In honor of my new friends, I decided to hold a little festival.

The inspiration for this celebration is my father.  Occasionally I get an artsy bent, and usually enlist my dad to help me out because he owns many tools and is crazy enough to let me use them.  On Saturday, we went garage sale-ing looking for cheap crystal bowls and such.  On Sunday, we courted electrocution and horrific eye injury while drilling through our trinkets.  Drilling through glass is unsafe enough--doing it while the object is submerged in a roasting pan full of water to keep the drill bit cool may be bordering on Darwin Award territory.  Here’s a sample of our final product:

I love flowers! And these don’t need water!

But the best part of the day was listening to my father’s never ending litany of clever colloquial phrases and metaphors.  These fantastic bits of speech just roll off his tongue; a completely normal part of Bob’s lexicon.  When I was a kid, I was mortified when dad would greet me and my friends with exclamations of how it was hotter than a popcorn fart outside.  My mother perfected the evil one eyebrow raised scowl when he would call her latest concoction tougher than boiled owl.  During election years he’d yell at the TV about the latest politician sounding like a shit salesman with a mouthful of samples.

Except for Dan Rather’s truly unique election night coverage of 2004 and episodes of Swamp People, these verbal gems are sorely under appreciated.  In literature, many novels are peppered with colloquial sayings, especially Mark Twain’s works and Catcher in the Rye.  I feel compelled to give them the spotlight they deserve with the Colloquial Conundrum Contest.

I don’t want to get too technical in terms--I consider colloquialisms to encompass many things others may call slang, metaphor, aphorism, or hyperbole.  If it’s a figure of speech you’ve heard said in your part of the world, that’s what I’m looking for--even “y’all” could be considered a colloquialism.  In its broadest application, it’s simply the manner in which a group speaks.  Here’s how to play:

1.  Put your favorite colloquialism of any type in the comments.

2.  The winner will be chosen at random, but I will give added chances for mentioning this contest on your blog or Twitter.

3.  Following my blog is not necessary, but it would be cool if you did.

The prize?  Well, it involves a literal twist on one of my dad’s sayings.  This one’s a little less colorful than the others, but I use it as inspiration almost every day--at work, at the store, while waiting in line at the DMV. . .

  You’ll get more flies with honey.

The winner will receive a gift basket from It's All About Bees, this fun little store down the street from me that focuses on using bee products in food and beauty items.  Included in the basket is:

Local honey, zesty honey BBQ sauce, Bee Butter body cream, Bee Magic Salve, Buzz off Insect Repellent, Honey sticks, Raw honey (3 flavors), Bee Lip Balm, Honey Almonds, and Choke Cherry Honey Jelly.

The contest will end Sunday, July 31st at midnight, central standard time.  Then I’ll tally and alert the winner on Monday.  Anything goes, after all, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.  And sometimes soda is really pop, except when it’s a Coke.

***Did a quick search of customs rules for food and glass containers, as well as international shipping costs, and unfortunately I will have to keep this one limited to folks in the U.S.  Sorry!