message type 0x44 arrived from server while idle

Hi,

I have a pretty simple table, log_rir:

id | integer | not null default nextval('"log_rir_id_seq"'::text)
first_time | timestamp with time zone | default ('now'::text)::timestamp(6) with time zone
last_time | timestamp with time zone | default ('now'::text)::timestamp(6) with time zone
facility | text |
message | text |
key | text |
status | text |
counter | integer |

The text fields are quite small, except for the message field, which
can be larger. The others are about 20-40 characters.

Now, the problem occurs when the message field contains a string
larger than about 32000 (I'd guess 32767). From my C application,
using libpq, when I'm selecting from this table, I get:

message type 0x44 arrived from server while idle

However, when I run the same select from psql, it works fine. This is
a Solaris 8 running PostgreSQL 7.2.1. Has anyone seen this, or know
what's causing it. If I just delete the row with the long message
field, the same select works from the application too.

Tomas