The Last Word

OF TURKEYS AND TOADS

By Mark Carter

It’s no jumping frog from the High Sierra, but the Sonoran desert toad is causing people to behave like characters from a Mark Twain tale.

Every once in a while, a headline invokes a double take, and “Park Service: Please don’t lick the toads” is one of them.

Some adventurous visitors to national parks and monuments in the Southwest are convinced the toad carries the “God molecule,” a hallucinogenic so unique and potent it’s been compared to a religious experience, the papers report. (Others call it your everyday, run-of-the-mill deadly toxin.)

On Facebook, the National Park Service recently reminded day-ahem-trippers to refrain from licking, be it a “banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night.”

Though toad-gathering in search of enlightenment apparently is a thing, and thus, the social media entreat, the demand for the trip-inducing toxins has led to the creation of a cottage “retreat” industry. The “God molecules” — scientific designation, 5-meO-DMT; street name, Bufo — found in the critter are manifested “safely” by drying the toad’s secretions into crystals, which are then smoked in a pipe.

And that last part, very much, is a thing. The toxin is illegal in the United States, classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance. But south of the border, the Bufo flows legally.

The practice of smoking these toad-infused crystals goes back decades. It’s treated as ceremony, costs hundreds or thousands of dollars, and the experience lasts from 15 to 30 minutes.

For those “meeting God,” that half hour could manifest itself in infinite ways. One could trip the light fantastic, perhaps through interdimensional stargates; ride dragons around floating mountains on Pandora; maybe tube the Strawberry River with Sasquatch in search of that elusive pick.

Depending on their own psychic nooks and crannies, trippers could channel Milton, Cameron, Black … But they might also discover an eternity in line at the DMV or encounter a worstmemory Groundhog Day. So, go ahead and pick your poison. Because in some cases, Bufo is high or die.

Ambrose Bierce — the dark Twain — disappeared in northern Mexico, mysteriously, in 1913. The renowned author and journalist, famous in his time as a war correspondent, had been embedded with Pancho Villa’s army during the Mexican Revolution.

His last known correspondence, written to a friend and dated Dec. 26, closed with the ominous line, “As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.”

He was never heard from again. The U.S. government launched an investigation into how one of its citizens, and a prominent one at that, went missing over the border. To no avail.

Most theories accept that Mr. Bierce was shot by Mexican rebels or died by suicide. But maybe, just maybe, he sampled the local toads the night before setting off from the city of Chihuahua with the general’s army.

And licked instead of dried. ***

The Monday before Thanksgiving, President Joe Biden presided over a truly American tradition — the annual pardoning of turkeys.

Despite the brilliant — and satirical, not that anyone remembers satire — headline from The Babylon Bee that declared a turkey was denied this traditional pardon after photos emerged of it outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, two gobblers indeed were spared the chopping block. Their names? Chocolate and Chip, for Mr. Biden’s favorite ice cream.

Still reveling in the aftermath of Democrats’ better-than-expected midterm showing, Mr. Biden was quick with the quips: no ballot stuffing or “fowl” play, the only red wave will be if Commander, the presidential German shepherd, knocks over the cranberry sauce … (The red trickle did deliver a GOP House, however, and the president’s confidence may soon take a hit.)

And in an appropriate sign of the times, the Bidens welcomed the year’s White House Christmas tree the same day, Thanksgiving now officially absorbed into the Christmas empire like Austria into the Reich.

Fortunately, neither Chocolate nor Chip was airdropped from a helicopter over the White House lawn, a la the Thanksgiving episode of the vastly under-appreciated “WKRP in Cincinnati.”

In it, after turkeys were dropped from the sky as part of a holiday promotion for his radio station, an unintended guinea Hindenburg, station boss Mr. Carlson admits, “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”

We’ve all had those moments, Mr. Carlson. Chocolate and Chip, the Associated Press reports, “flew” back to North Carolina to live out their post-pardon lives.

The president, to his credit, closed the ceremony with remarks about which we should all be willing to agree, and for which a prompter shouldn’t have been necessary: “This is a special time … in the greatest nation on Earth, so let’s be thankful.”

Amen to that, Mr. President.