My dog relieved himself on my parsley plant. Are my garden herbs safe to eat?

I recently watched our dog cock his leg and do a big, long morning wee on our parsley plant in the back garden. What do I do now? I dearly love using fresh parsley in our family meals.
M.L., Glen Iris, VIC

Here’s a potted history of your parsley plant. Before your dog weed on it, it would’ve already been thickly smothered in the secretions and excretions of thousands of birds, possums, caterpillars, flies and aphids, along with the viscous reproductive discharge of horny hermaphroditic snails lubing up for a raunchy one-night stand with themselves.

And before all these various critters defecated and urinated and slimed all over your parsley plant, it would’ve been exposed to a multitude of common plant diseases, including blight, leaf spot, root rot and both the mildews, downy and powdery (incidentally, Downy and Powdery Mildew would make a great pair of sisters in a Jane Austen novel. Frumpy and unwed, with patchy cheeks and droopy, stunted limbs). Then, long before the parsley plant became riddled with quaintly named Austenesque pathogens, the seedling would’ve originally been planted in a bed of rich, composty soil containing trillions of hazardous microbes, including E. coli, Campylobacter and the dreaded Legionella bacteria, which causes Legionnaires’ Disease – a severe lung infection that can lead to chest pain, nausea, organ failure, death and the wearing of a floppy cap-hat with a dangly flap at the back that makes grown men look like imbeciles at the beach (worse than death).

That’s why you don’t need to worry: the entire lifespan of your parsley plant is noxious and toxic and disgusting, so just give it a really good wash and serve it to your family. Even if it still contains traces of dog wee, no one’s going to notice. I mean, come on, it’s parsley. That’s what it tastes like, anyway.

guru@goodweekend.com.au

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