El Salvador
To locate Phylobates Terriblis, poison spitting tree frog.
You can get more with a kind word & a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
Johnny Carson
Seamon: This is a treacherous, filthy country, stewing in a vile population of moral-less weasels. As I related in last weeks all to desperate dispatch, I had nearly been garroted by the chief eel gutter, after a small misunderstanding over a cigarette butt . Only my superior footwork saved my skin to carry on this un-savory & perilous frog hunt.
So, as you can well imagine, after this sprightly chase down main street, I found myself on the parched side & sought to wet my whistle in a seedy cinder block cantina called the Green Parrot. The place had the atmosphere of a slaughterhouse, however after a several rapid libations it began to take on a certain ambiance. A very young ‘waitress’, who went by ‘Marta’ asked if she could join me...Senor Frog...[I swear Seamon, I used to have frozen dinners older than these ‘girlfriend’s of the sailors}. Anyway I was relating to Marta the odd custom of the aquatic Pipidae family, containing the species Surinam Toad, as you know, who have these incredibly long fingers. They use these fingers to grope the mud &
slime of their Orinoco system habitat, in their daily search for fare.
Well of course Marta was fascinated with my knowledge of Amphibians & all but begged me to go on, so there I was explaining how the female of the species lays her eggs, & the male helps attach the eggs to her back, where the skin grows over them. The young do not emerge until they are fully developed, as you well may know.
I believe Marta at this point was having a rough time with my translation of this procedure, so I was in the midst of a small demonstration, squatting on the floor shoving beer bottles up my shirt & down my shorts, when who should walk in but the local police dept....or as their known down here...the death squad.
The death squad then proceeded to take up residence at the metal folding table directly behind me, unloading an ugly but impressive armory on said table as they sat. A bottle of bad brandy & a dozen beers was demanded & within minutes their mood turned foul.
Now at this point there were only two patrons in the Parrot, myself & a rude but large German seaman who had pretty much kept to himself torturing one of Marta’s sisters in a dark corner. Therefore, it was I that was quickly becoming the center of attention.
Even with only one eye, {the other I lost to a BB gun & had replaced with a small glass 8-ball, as you know}, anyway with just one eye I am still able to see that these Latino fellturn exceptionally mean when drinking. I mean, this is a country where the national pastime is suspending live chickens from a branch, charging at them on horseback, severing their heads with a machete, then attempting to knock each other of their mounts with the bleeding corpses. This is the land of Bullfights, Cockfights, Dogfights, Catfights, & anything else that will kill each other if prompted.
So you can well imagine Seamon, that my nerves were on edge when I heard the Death Squad’s conversation turn to frogs, & the men who like them.
Now I try to always make it a rule, when confronted with a heavily armed, drunken Death Squad, & out numbered 6 to one, cowardice seems the better part of valor to me.
I was preparing to depart the Parrot when un-benounced to me one these robust sunglassed ‘policemen’ walked up behind my chair & unloaded his pistol into the floor beneath my posterior.
Now Seamon.....I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a 20 foot square dark cinder block room when someone fires six shots from a large handgun beneath your unsuspecting bum. Well I have now & I can tell you the human body is an amazingly resilient organism. My mind of coarse was flat-lined, but my body calmly rose from that chair, my hands paid the bill, my mouth wished Marta a pleasant night, and amidst the howling laughter of the Death Squad I walked out the front door.....and collapsed...like a Hong Kong Suitcase.
I was awake mind you....VERY awake...but my legs simply would not gather beneath me.
“HEY SENOR FROG LEGS!! The chant went up from the 2 or 3 hundred ladies on the street.
I finally gathered those quivering hams beneath myself & staggered down a dank, dark street to the ....Hotel California.
Now the Hotel California, might have frightened a person dealing with all his capacities, but I was far from that.
For 4 dollars American you got a rusty padlock which hung on the outside of a hammered wooden door which opened to a grubby 10 foot cubical with a suspect cot & a fly-spotted graphic picture of the crucifixion . There is one interior design motif for motels from Tijuana to Terra del Fuego.
Moths kamakazied the light bulb on a wire. Frogs serenaded from under the bed. My ears still rang from the gunfire. It made me a bit uneasy that the Hotel California had no interior lock on the door, one simply padlocked the door from the outside when not there, but when inside the room there was no way to secure it.
Seeking to soothe my frayed nerves I collapsed on that lumpy mattress & resurrected a dog-eared copy of Frog Monthly from my pack.
Immediately, a fascinating article on Dendrobatidae : Poison Frogs, came to view. Now Poison Frogs it turns out can only live in a temperature above 22 degrees Celsius, air humidity above 80% which of course would explain the incredible lack of Poisonous frogs in the Crested Butte area. Poisonous Frogs come in an cosmic array of psychedelic colors, which serve to warn would be connoisseurs of frog meat to move on to the next basic green model. The poison which is called Batrachotoxin, comes from the pores of it’s skin, & no-where in this article did it mention a poison spitting tree frog of El Salvador. I could very well be the first to discover this hazardous little bugger. Now the deadliest of all these petite little dudes aptly named Phylobates Terriblis, has been used for thousands of years by the Choco Indians as a toxic dip for their poison arrows. The poison, (pay attention here now Seamon), from one frog only, can kill 20,000 mice! Imagine the scientists working on that project!
“Hello Dear! “ What’d you do at the office today love?”
“Well today, my pet, we injected mice with frog poison, fascinating really, we’re up to 16,879.... all dead. I can hardly wait to get back at it tomorrow!”
I dozed off, thinking about what it must have been like for mouse number 20,001....nerve-racking no doubt.
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