Poisonous beetles blamed for horses' deaths

Associated Press

Oct. 30, 2007 03:36 PM

SIERRA VISTA - A poisonous beetle is to blame for the deaths of two horses in southern Arizona.

Annette Gerhardt noticed that two of her horses were acting lethargic, uninterested in their food and appeared uncomfortable.

She said she thought the horses had colic, so she gave them banamine injections and watched them carefully. When the horses got worse, she took them to a veterinarian in Benson to get more aggressive treatment.

But it was too late.

Gerhardt's horses, a filly named Sedona and a mare named Mandy, died of blister beetle poisoning despite intravenous fluids and vigilant monitoring. Sedona died Friday and Mandy died Sunday.

The poisonous blister beetle is attracted to the blooms of flowering alfalfa plants, meaning hay is especially vulnerable to contamination.

Gerhardt later found more than 30 dead beetles in one flake of hay that she had used to feed her horses before they became ill.

"It doesn't take very many beetles to make a horse sick, and since the beetles swarm, they could be in one small area of the hay, while the rest of the hay is fine," said Nancy Leveranz, the veterinarian who treated the horses.

The toxin present in the blister beetles, cantharidin, is extremely stable and remains toxic even in dead, dried-up beetles. It's therefore possible for animals to be poisoned by ingesting dead beetles, or even parts of beetles, in hay that has been cut and baled much earlier in the year.

"These were beautiful, sweet animals that just didn't stand a chance against this horrible insect," Gerhardt said.

Yeah but how would you find blister beetles? A slightly better idea would, hypothetically of course , extract ricin in a blender using a phosphate buffer and methly cellusolve, filter through a whatman / ceramic filter, dry in an electric decicator and sprinkle over tasty vegan food and donate to the next black block or no border event, which would be wrong and something we would never ever do. Just talking out my ass really. I have no idea how it's really done.

How about a tasty pudding?

Ricin is a particular human toxin. It is dangerous to extract and any fool who does so will most likely ingest a small amount.

Dealing with mounted and armed threats, a bag of marbles works really well on pavement, nets in foliage.

Horse meat is delicious.

Ricin is not particularly difficult to extract. It was a organic lab extraction in my college days before it became illegal. You need little more than castor beans and some o chem glassware. Castor beans is where castor oil comes from. People have been pressing the oil for centuries which is the first step, A decent fume hood and good lab hygeine is all you need.