Several years ago, I got a bad case of poison work while doing irrigation system repairs in the neighbor's pasture. I was on my hands and knees, digging in the mud with three cows looking up my butt....but that's another story.

So, singing fireman Dave Swann heard of my predicament, and he told me to use a product called "Zanfel" - firefighters get poison oak fighting wildfires. The price of a one-ounce tube was about forty bucks, and I'm not sure it helped. I suffered from poison oak all that summer - and I hired somebody else to put in a new irrigation system for us.

But anyhow, this Zanfel soap had those plastic pebbles in it, and scrubbing with it gave me a good scratch. I can't imagine any other way that scratching a case of poison oak would be a good thing to do, but this was terrific! I can see that those plastic beads would be a problem to the ecology, but I think those beads helped relieve my suffering that summer.


-Joe-