For years, I made a 65-proof liqueur by soaking wild cherries for 4 months in vodka, diluting it with a sweetened syrup made from excess cherries.

Recently, I heard that wild cherries are poisonous. Birds love the cherries and they're not harmed. No one who drank the liqueur ever got sick. Are mine different from the poisonous ones? Did soaking in vodka remove the poison?