I hated poison ivy. My favorite cousin, when we were about six years old, breathed the fumes of burning poison ivy in a wire can in his backyard. The smoke burned the lining of his nose, his throat, esophagus, and lungs. For three years he could only eat soft, bland foods. When my daughter who is a red-head gets the itchy bumps of poison ivy, they spread, become blisters, and inflame her skin for a month. Ninety percent of people have an intense allergic reaction to the oily sap.

A few weeks ago, my neighbors on an adjoining street knocked on my door to complain about low limbs from my red oaks hanging over their cars and a limb up high threatening to fall as well. I called Catawba Tree Experts. The young arborist agreed with my neighbors, also saw some high-up dead limbs, and commented on my ugly tree that looked like a “hat rack.” It was the result of a man with a chain saw cutting beyond his skill set.

“I see you have a very healthy poison ivy vine growing up the bark of that butchered tree.” I looked up and he was right. My ugly tree was now covered in a green vine with the tell-tale three leaf clusters.

“I want you to pull that down,” I said, “or cut it off and kill it at the bottom of that tree.”

“You wouldn’t want me to do that,” the young man said. “That vine is pure heaven to birds.”

“Really?” I had never heard of such a thing.

“Oh yes. Bobwhites, brown thrashers, mockingbirds, red-bellied woodpeckers, yellow-rumped warblers, Carolina chickadees, bluebirds, and catbirds.

“Really?”

“They love the berries and flowers of poison oak. The leaves turn a brilliant red in the fall enticing black bears to climb up, squirrels and snakes to nibble.”

“Really? You don’t think we should just kill it?”

I divide bad, poisonous, invasive plants from the good flowering plants, grasses, and shrubs in the same way that I divide good and bad people and right and wrong political views. It was unsettling to hear anything good about poison ivy or poison oak.

Writing Exercise:

• What strong opinion have you had about someone about whom you have now changed your mind?

• Can you think of someone who gave you a different perspective which caused you to think about something in a new way. Has a book ever done that for you?