Licking toads to get high

Photo: io9.gizmodo.com

I recently received an email with little known facts about life and the world we live in.

Information such as at any given hour there are more than 61,000 people in airplanes over the United States is interesting.

Well, it is to me anyway, which gives you some idea of just how pathetic my life is and just how easily amused I a can be.

I would also find life much easier if there were not so many shiny things lying about to distract my already distracted brain.

Another amusing, yet absolutely useless piece of information is the first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

Oh, how times have changed. Now, it would be acceptable to show Fred and Barney in bed together.

Anyway, one of the items in the email of useless (but interesting) information sent me on a short-lived quest to verify the validity of the claim.

The statement was simple: you cannot lick your elbow.

My first thought was, “Why would you want to?”

My second thought was, “I wonder if that is true.”

So I casually found a quiet space where, that’s right, you guessed it, I tried to prove them wrong.

Feel free to give it a try yourself. Go ahead, you know you want to.

You have likely just learned the same thing I did, which is the same thing the original author learned and that is you can’t lick your elbow.

Perhaps some people can, but they are as rare as an honest politician.

I wonder who the first person to try this feat was, and more importantly why did they try it.

I guess some people just have waaaay too much time on their hands. It is just another example of people doing strange things that most of us probably would never even think of trying.

The elbow incident got me thinking about other strange activities and how they came to be. There have been stories over the years about people licking toads and frogs to get high.

First of all, that is truly disgusting. Second, who knew licking an amphibian would give you a buzz?

Who was the first person to lay tongue to toad and think, “Wow, that’s groovy man.”

Were they sitting around a campfire moaning about not having any money for beer when a frog hopped across the lawn and someone said, “I know, let’s lick that frog for fun?”

The only thing stranger than the guy who came up with the idea, is the person he got to join him in getting fresh with a frog. I refer to the inventor of the getting-personal-with-a-frog-as-a-form-of-entertainment game as a male, because, honestly, I do not know any females dumb enough to try licking a frog for fun.

Or perhaps it started at Woodstock where someone decided to take the ‘experimental stage’ of their life to the next level and include woodland swamp creatures to help with the expansion of their mind.

“Hey, what’s wrong with Mikey? He’s freaking out.”

“He got hold of some bad frog, man.”

“Bummer man, I wonder how many flies he’s gonna eat before he comes down.”

In my years on this Earth, I have never considered a frog a party accessory, but others have and if it weren’t for those willing to push the limits of idiotic behaviour, there would be much less to talk about in this world.

Thank goodness it never caught on, or police would be raiding grow ops one week, and frog farms the next.

“Pssst, hey buddy. You lookin’ to score some amphibian? I got frog. I got toad.”

And as everyone knows, frogs are the gateway amphibian.

One minute, it’s a simple pond frog, then it’s a big ol’ bullfrog and the next thing you know, you’re all the way up to snogging an iguana.

Pretty soon you are sleeping in the bushes next to the zoo just waiting for the chance to sneak in under the fence and make off with a creature of the Kermit variety.

Instead of asking for spare change, you are asking for directions to the nearest swamp.

As if actually licking a frog was not enough of a reason not to try it in the first place, the thing that creates the ‘high’ is actually a mild poison secreted from the critter to fend off attackers.

How smart do you have to be to ingest poison for a cheap high?

I guess if you are willing to lick a frog in the first place, the answer presents itself.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.