I Was a Teenage Horny Toad
By Scott Cupp
from Strange Creatures
I was a teenage horny toad. Really I was! It was 1965 and I was 13 years old–too old to believe in the Magic and too young to realize that it just really was impossible.
We were living in Sulphur then, just a few miles west of Parnassus, Texas, which was (and still is, for that matter) a mere 150 miles and years from anything resembling modern civilization.
Sulphur was a small town of about 3,500 located on the eastern edge of west Texas, between Odessa and Dallas. Being located in the middle of Tornado Alley, you got a fair bit of wind and a small amount of rain, similar to Dallas. You also got the desert look of Odessa. It was hot as Hell and the only things that seemed to thrive were snakes, mosquitoes, fire ants, mesquite, prickly pear cactus, and horny toads.
My brother Ralph and I loved and hated Sulphur. We had moved there from much more open climates (i.e. places that had four real seasons rather than Summer and Not Summer). The first year we were there the Weather Bureau reported 107 days where the temperature exceeded 100 degrees.
In 1965, Summer was the weirdest time. My dad was in the Army and was off in Korea. My mother was working in a department store in Parnassus, attempting to keep three kids in clothes and food. Being the oldest, my job was the de facto babysitter for The Ralph, my sister Ginny, and myself.
We had a routine. After Mom left, the TV came on. We watched anything, but were especially fond of old movies and variety shows. We learned to play Canasta and had long marathon games. We were inside-kids most days. But on the days the new comics came in, we would go down to the 7-11 if we still had allowance money. There we found Heaven–comics, baseball cards, and books. I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs and Pellucidar with its dinosaurs that summer.
Now, three kids in a small house with lots of heat sounded like a recipe for trouble. And we were constantly in it. So, when the heat wave finally broke, we hit the outdoors.
Sulphur’s not quite like the Beaver’s home town. Those places had grass. We had dirt and grass burrs. But the Beav didn’t get to chase horny toads like we did. We’d go out in the morning and see them sitting on a rock trying to draw the heat out of it. Somewhere nearby there would be an antbed because ants work regardless of the heat and the toads loved the ants.
A horny toad is one of the ugliest creatures ever made. It has a leathery lizard skin topped with spikes growing out in all directions. Kind of like a dinosaur’s idea of a porcupine.
They were slow and easy to catch, but rarely cooperative when Ralph and I wanted them to be passengers in model cars that we wanted to crash. But fun was what you made of your situation, and it sure beat Tennessee Ernie Ford at noon.
On this day, Ralph and I were trying to crash model cars. He had a Rat Fink dragster while I was running a ‘57 T-Bird convertible. I had a toad sort of wedged in the seats and was running my car toward Ralph’s. The cars crashed. The dragster flipped and my toad was off running for a bolt hole. I leapt after the toad and thought I caught him before he managed to hit the hole. When I opened my hands, all I had was this goofy looking ring.
The ring looked like one of those adjustable kinds from a gumball machine. It was pretty cheesy but it had this crude horny toad symbol on it. I slid it on my finger and it fit just fine.
I ran my other hand over the symbol and thought of the Green Lantern oath. Weird rings did that to me. Buff them up and recite a magic oath and, who knows, maybe something weird would happen. I buffed it and made up an oath:
“A boy by day, A Toad by night. Everyone Better take Flight! Toads Rule!”
It wasn’t a great oath but it was OK for spur of the moment. There wasn’t a magic glow or puff of smoke. No lightning bolt going SHAZAM! Since nothing exciting happened, I went to recover the T-bird and went back inside.
In my room, I picked up a copy of “At the Earth’s Core”. It had a wonderful Krenkel dinosaur cover that got me to pick up the book in the first place. I re-read the book pretending that I was David Innes saving Pellucidar.
That evening I had dinner ready when Mom got home. We watched “Bewitched” that night. Magic is a funny thing. Who’d have thought it could be found in Sulphur?
I spent the evening tossing and turning in bed. I had weird dreams filled with plump insects. When I woke, it was dawn and I was wrapped in a sheet on the floor.
The sheet and my pajamas had holes in them that hadn’t been there the night before. My finger with the toad ring was red and sore. I tried to take the ring off, but it was stuck.
I changed into my clothes fast and hid the sheets and pajamas. I would have time to handle them later. I needed to get dressed and get my mind straight.
I went outside and sat in the shade intending to ponder the weird dreams and torn linens. There was an anthill near where I was sitting. I couldn’t see it but I could smell it and it smelled good! Without even thinking, I found myself on my hands and knees investigating it.
There were two ants crawling out of the mound. My tongue flicked out and snatched them off the ground! I was two feet away! When I realized I had swallowed the ants, my stomach began to heave, ridding itself of all contents, ants and otherwise.
“Honey, are you OK?” Mom came up beside me.
I durn near jumped out of my skin. I flared my eyes and squirted blood out of an eye sac straight at her.
Mom screamed and passed right out. I saw the blood and ran screaming next door. Mrs. Carlsen came running out in her house-robe. Other neighbors did too.
They got Mom propped up and began patting her cheeks. She came to in no time. “I saw a brown recluse drop onto my shoulder and just lost it,” she said when questioned. She looked straight at me while she said it.
After coffee and a sweet roll with Mrs. Carlsen, she called her boss. “Jerry, the oldest is sick and I need to get him to a doctor right away. I’ll be in as soon as I can,” she said.
When we went back home she didn’t say anything. She grabbed her purse and the other two kids and pointed to the car.
I didn’t show them the toad ring. I had forgotten about it, which seems odd after the fact, but I had no idea it played any part in the events. You only get to be young and stupid once and this was my day for it.
Dr. Pink released me and we went home. “No stressful activities,” was the only caution he gave. Mom didn’t say much. “Are you OK?” was all she asked and I could tell that there were loads of levels to that question.
I stayed in my room the rest of the day, reading a novel about Reptilicus and listening to the radio. About six, Mom called me for dinner. “We’re having meatloaf. Your favorite,” she said. If Dad had been there we would have been just like a real family, in a normal setting.
I got to stay in the living room after dinner. I hadn’t done anything weird so Mom thought maybe I was better. We watched “The Wild, Wild West”. What a show! But, as we watched, my hand began to throb. The toad ring began to glow a faint gray. I looked outside to see the final rays of the setting sun. A stray fly landed on the sofa near me. My tongue shot out and vacuumed that sucker right on up. Mom lost control right then.
My hand began to turn a dull gray- brown. Little spines began pushing through the skin on my hand. The rest of my body was doing the same. My eyes bugged out and moved sideways.
Ralph ran to his room, grabbed a BB gun, and started taking potshots at me. Ginny started to cry. I couldn’t stand on two legs anymore. I kept turning around and knocking into things. My depth perception was no good, and I was having a hard time thinking. Ralph bounced a BB off my left eyelid. It stung and startled me. I took off for outside, straight through the glass door and the screen behind it.
I didn’t have a plan or any idea where I was going. My sense of smell had improved and I could smell an antbed near the house I didn’t know existed before. Somewhere nearby there were three female horny toads with Love on their minds, but I wasn’t going for that.
The Dobermans next door were having a fit. Here I was a five-foot horny toad, just a bite-sized appetizer to these guys. Mrs. Carlsen came out for a look, saw me, screamed, and ran back inside.
I crawled out into the street with the intention of crossing it. But the pavement was so warm and soothing I just laid there, half dozing. I didn’t even hear the car.
It was Kevin Riley in his shiny new Mustang. Bright red and flashy and coming up the street far too fast. I stared into the headlights and heard him scream. I saw the driver’s door open and Kevin leapt out. The car kept coming and ran over my tail. It hurt like Hell and I swatted that car hard. I didn’t knock it over, or anything superhuman like that, but I left some great claw marks down the side.
The car swerved off the road and stuck in a ditch. Suddenly there lots of people out in their front yards checking out the commotion. They were yelling and screaming and I began to see guns. Not the BB-type like Ralph had, but honest-to-God real things designed to take out elephants, or worse. I figured I was the worse.
I took off crawling along the ground. Shots passed near me. I was glad that people do not shoot well when confronted with five-foot lizards. There was a relatively empty field ahead of me, populated by mesquite, cactus, and prairie dogs. I figured one extra horny toad wouldn’t disturb it too much. I tried to find a big bolt- hole but there weren’t any. Instead, I found a small arroyo and hid in it.
The mob found me by tracing the track of my tail through the field. They started shooting. Several folks were carrying torches and Coleman lanterns. I could smell the fumes from a pickup truck and a vat of boiling oil. I wondered where they got a vat of boiling oil, but dismissed the thought when I realized that I was to be the boilee.
When they got within 100 yards of me, I bolted from the arroyo and ran across the field. We did this maneuver several more times as the evening progressed. I could hear Mom crying every time one of those boys took a shot at me. She couldn’t convince them that I was me, and, frankly, I don’t think a couple of them would have cared.
Dr. Pink was there trying to keep the crowd calm. But when you’re hauling around dogs, guns, torches, and vats of boiling oil, you just don’t think real straight when it comes to monsters. They were an ugly crowd and it was all I could do to keep away from them.
I thought I gave them the slip once when I crawled deep inside a drainage culvert. It had a little recess way down inside and I didn’t think they could see me hiding in it. Inside the recess I began digging through the loam trying to hide deeper. Strong arms and claws are great for digging. And it was a good thing, too.
They tracked me to the culvert and when they didn’t see a track out the other side, they poured that boiling oil right on down the drain. It burned the tip of my tail and caused me to whip it in tight. Someone saw the motion and threw a torch down.
All I could think of was Burnt Toad in a Hole and that didn’t sound very good to me. Fortunately my hole was big enough and uphill enough to prevent the burning oil from surrounding me.
While my pursuers were trying to get back into the culvert to see the damage done, I kept digging. I managed 100 feet faster than I thought possible. They didn’t hear the digging over the sound of the crowd and the flames. There was no one nearby when I hit the surface. As I hit the street, the first light of day broke over Sulphur, and I suddenly found myself turning back into a kid. A kid with little on but some shredded rags. I managed to run like a demon and get home without being seen.
I took a shower to get rid of the dirt then got dressed. I had to pack my stuff and leave before they came to shoot me, and this time without a protective hide. As I grabbed a pair of socks, I saw the ring on my hand and remembered the corny oath. That was when Life had started to get weird. The ring was still glowing and I was sure that it was the cause of all my trouble. I tried to pull it off. No go. It was stuck.
I wondered for a while about its power. Where had it come from? Had I angered RamaLamaDingdong, the god of the horny toads, with the car crash and the silly oath? None of it made sense, but I knew sure as anything if I was still wearing this ring at sundown I would be horny toad barbecue by tomorrow morning. Sulphur people may not be big-city folk but they were not going to let one of their own become a giant lizard- beast terrorizing the town and such. They’d seen the same movies as me. What if I had radioactive Godzilla-breath?
I knew what I had to do. The ring had to come off. And, if it wouldn’t come off nice and easy, we would do it hard and ugly–country style.
I went to the garage where Dad kept his tools. I slipped a hacksaw blade between the ring and my finger and commenced to sawing like crazy. It didn’t seem to affect the ring. My finger got sore and hot from the friction but there wasn’t even a nick in the ring. I sprayed my hand with WD-40 hoping to loosen the ring. It just made my hand feel yucky.
I tried every tool in the shop. Nothing affected the ring. I hated my logical mind. If the ring wouldn’t leave the finger and if nothing affected the ring, then I had to do something to the finger.
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Suddenly, I wasn’t a 13-year-old kid running from a mob. By God, I was a man. I went inside and got some towels.
I swallowed about a dozen aspirins and got the tin shears. I covered my hand with the towels so I couldn’t see. I put my hand into the grips and felt the first tingle of metal against the finger. I put a towel in my mouth, bit down, and squeezed for all I was worth.
There was a quick stab of pain, followed by a dull roar through my mind. Blood soaked the towel around my wrist. I threw the tin shears across the garage, missing the car purely by accident. I reached inside the towel and removed the offensive finger and put it into a box of nails. Then I passed out.
Somewhere in the next few minutes Mom came in with Ralph and Ginny. She saw me on the ground in a pool of blood and ran off screaming again. Who’d have thought she would do that three times in the same 24-hour period? What lungs! She’d give Fay Wray a run for the money, I think.
Dr. Pink heard the scream and came running in with his bag. He took care of me and her pretty fast. But he didn’t ask any questions. When he finished with me, I looked at him and said, “That’s it! It’s all over!”
I was telling the truth and he seemed to know it. The Sheriff came by. “This here the horny- toad boy?”
“Hell, yes!” somebody yelled.
“Don’t look like much of a threat to me. What you think, Doc? He a deadly menace to civilization as we know it?”
Before Dr. Pink could answer, I said, “Oh, yeah. I’m bad. I’m gonna eat H-bombs for breakfast and kill everyone with my deadly claws.” I scratched the air with my hands showing off my nine deadly quarter-inch nails.
“Come on downtown today and make a statement. Before nightfall. Just in case,” the Sheriff said, and left.
Alone with Mom and Dr. Pink, I told them the whole story. Dr. Pink admitted that I had used some sense in determining the ring had to come off, but I might have been a tad rash in the execution. “Where’s the ring now?” he asked.
“I threw the blasted thing away as far as I could. I didn’t even see it land.”
I don’t think he believed me. I know Mom didn’t because she made me watch while she searched my room and the garage. I was able to get it out of the nail box after she searched me and before she searched it. I kept it safe while she searched.
I hid the finger in the piggy bank in my room. At five she took me downtown to “talk” with the Sheriff. I spent a pleasant evening in jail. They brought me a chocolate malt and a hamburger and fries. They moved the TV over where I could watch it. There was no one else staying there so the Sheriff made me feel special.
By nine o’clock there was a pretty healthy crowd hanging around. They still had rifles and torches. When I didn’t turn into a toad, they all looked at Mom. “So the big toad’s your kid, huh?” one asked as he grabbed his gun and dog. “C’mon, boys. There’s still a big horny toad over in that field somewhere and somebody’s gonna pay good to get it.” They left. Mom and Dr. Pink stayed with me until midnight when the Sheriff let me loose.
When I got home, I checked the ring. It was glowing and my former finger was leathery–horny toad like. It was writhing as if in pain. I got out a knife and carved a hole in my copy of At the Earth’s Core and put the finger in there.
The ring is calling to me even as I write. I know I will open the book again this evening. So far, I’ve always managed to put the ring back into the book and place it back onto the shelf. But tonight, who knows?
Copyright © 1998, by Scott Cupp
