Nate Nagel wrote:

was helping a friend clean up his property a couple weeks ago. ended up
with a nasty case of what appeared to be poison ivy on my forearms and
to a lesser extent my legs, despite never having ever had poison
anything ever before in my life. Hadn't seen anything looking like
poison ivy, but I did clear out a huge mess of various weeds from a
hedgerow.

Did you see any weeds that looked like this?

http://images.google.com/images?as_q=%22wild+parsnip%22