The Haxtun-Fleming Herald - What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope

Some things in this world don’t require much explanation for them to make sense to just about anyone. On the other side of the coin, there are certain situations that are difficult to explain to another person. It’s hard because even the expert doesn’t seem to understand what he’s saying.

Among the easy ones is the recommendation to not walk suddenly behind a horse. If you violate this law of nature, Plaster of Paris will become a very big thing in your life the next five to eight weeks. Another fairly simple direction is not to crawl under your pickup when it is held in the air by one of those shaky “handy man” jacks. Should you choose to do so, a large part of your anatomy will become flatter than a cow pie from Bossy after she’s been grazing on the lawn.

At the top of my list of things not so easy to explain ... no make that impossible to explain … is this one I noticed the other day. I was going to vaccinate some calves before I weaned them. In preparation for the event I rounded up my supplies which included several of those “mono-ject” disposable plastic syringes.

“Use once then discard” their label says. Knowing full well I must be violating several state, federal and veterinary practitioner laws, I reuse them. In fact, some have been used so many times the warning label is about worn off. I just squirt some mostly hot water through them and toss ‘em in my cardboard “vet supply” box. I acknowledge this must be a sanitation issue, since medicine from the previous use could be left over to contaminate the next use.

Comfortable in the understanding my cheapness will probably result in the death of half the next batch of cattle I work, I proceed to open, mix and use the hundreds of dollars of vaccines in front of me. Then I noticed the warning label on nearly every bottle. “Discard any un-used contents after opening. “ Keep out of sun light and below 55 degrees. Failure to do so will greatly reduce the product’s efficacy.” This means it won’t be any good if you don’t pamper it. The active ingredients in the vaccines and medicines don’t stay active more than a few minutes or hours at best. There’s no sense cheating here. Trying to use this stuff later would be a waste of time and risk the animal’s well-being. It would be like administering water instead of drugs.

Here’s my problem. If this stuff can’t live in the bottle it came in more than an hour or so, under any circumstances, how come I have to throw away my “contaminated” previously used syringes, stored in a cardboard box on the top shelf of my coat closet? If the “active ingredient” in my vaccine can live on the sides of a plastic disposable syringe, why don’t they just make the bottle the stuff comes in out of that same plastic?

One final twist on this earth-shattering issue. Why must I throw away my plastic, one time only tools, yet it’s OK to wash and re-use my $60 really cool syringe, made of ... plastic?

The next time you’re lying under your pickup, wishing you’d used a better jack, this will give you something to think about until someone comes looking for you.