This Simone story begins about a week ago, when Gary discovers evidence of mice in the garage. He announces that he is going to ride his bike to Bi-Mart to go get something to take care of it, disappears for awhile, then returns. Nothing else was said about the mouse problem, and we went along our merry way.
Fast forward to today. We had been out running errands and picking up produce at the farmer's market. We returned home around 2:40pm. Simone stayed outside with Gary, who was working in the garage, and I went into the house. A few minutes later, I went back out to get something out of the truck, and Gary asked me what Simone was eating. I told him I hadn't given her anything to eat, save a cookie about 5 minutes ago. He went over and opened her mouth, and discovered that she was eating something blue. I told him I had not given her a blue cookie, and that's when it registered to Gary that Simone was eating a rodenticide block that he had put in what he thought was an inconspicuous place in the garage. Apparently it wasn't missed by Simone, who thought she would get to sneak a snack.
I'd been told awhile back that 3% hydrogen peroxide would cause a dog to vomit, so we gave her about 15 cc and waited a few minutes for it to work its magic. Nothing. We gave her another 5 cc and waited a little longer. Still no reaction. At this point, we realized we were going to need some help getting her to vomit, so we called our vet. They were of course closed, so we were once again referred back to Willamette, which has a 24-7 urgent care clinic. We gave them a call, and then sped down to the office.
By the time we reached the clinic, it had been about 40 minutes post ingestion. They quickly took her into the back room and gave her an injection of apomorphine, which caused her to vomit quickly. She vomited up a nearly intact block of the blue rodenticide for the vet tech. The doctor then led her back in, told us that because she had vomited up nearly all of the poison, she didn't anticipate any adverse effects. The doctor then gave us a prescription for vitamin K just in case the small amount she did absorb started to cause any problems with blood clotting.
So, Simone's home now, doped up from the morphine-related emetic, and taking it easy. The vet told us she'll probably be out of it for awhile, but should be fine come tomorrow. We're just relieved that she's going to be okay. Suffice it to say that this kind of thing won't happen again, and any tactics we might use to kill mice in the future won't be something that Simone will be able to find!
Here's a little twist: As you probably recall, I did a stint at the National Pesticide Information Center when we first moved to Corvallis. While I was there, my friend and coworker Bonnie wrote a case profile on rodenticide poisoning. She asked me if I would mind if she used my, Gary's, and Simone's names in her article, and I consented. The story is centered around Gary and Carley's daughter Simone, who may have ingested some rodenticide she found in the garage. Just as in the story, we had just returned home from shopping, and then caught Simone with some blue rodenticide. There are a lot of rodenticides out there, so we find it even more ironic that the rodenticide in the story is the same as the one that Simone actually ingested today: bromadiolone. If you'd like to read the original case study from 2005, visit http://npic.orst.edu/capro/RodentsGnaw.pdf.
