Cocoa Mulch

I had never heard of it until this morning when a friend of mine forwarded an email warning of the danger this particular type of mulch poses to pets. Of course, my urban legend radar went up, but upon clicking on the Snopes.com link in the email, I found the email to be true.
If dogs, especially, ingests chocolate, it could be fatal. Snopes reports only one death from a dog eating cocoa mulch, but one dog dying is too many. The Snopes report has quotes from the Humane Society and suggests that people concerned about their pets should use some other form of mulch.
Here's the link you can copy and paste into your browser:
http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/cocoamulch.asp

Thanks, Barbara Frohoff for passing that email along.