Don't Do Drugs!

We were probably tempting fate when we named our Chihuahua, Pablo Escobark, after the infamous drug lord.

Scotto pulled up in the driveway after work on Tuesday to find a highly distressed Pinky, pacing the front patio with a bedraggled Chihuahua draped in a towel in her arms.

“Don’t close the garage door!” I shrieked melodramatically. “We might have to rush to the vet! We have a situation!”

I’d arrived home from work, made a coffee, began reading the newspaper then noticed Celine the fox-terrier had followed me upstairs but the Chihuahua was nowhere to be seen. This was uncharacteristic of him. I called out and waited for the familiar rat like, scuttling noises up the stairs… but none came. 

I sighed and wandered downstairs.

Honestly, it’s like having a three year old; gawd knows what the little shite was up to.

I heard a raspy, hacking, Joe Cocker type cough coming from the lounge room.

Pablo staggered out, foaming liberally at the mouth with eyeballs rolling around in their sockets.

I’d witnessed this grisly scenario before. It was a clear case of ‘cane toad crack head’.

High as a kite.

I scooped the perma-fried speed freak up and stuck him under the laundry tap while he spluttered and belligerently protested.

“Leave me alone, man! I just wanna get high. You suck man!”

As soon as Scotto arrived, he drenched Pablo under the tap and washed the dog's mouth out again while I made an anxious phone call to the vet.

“He looks a bit weird,” I told the girl. “His eyes are staring in different directions.”

“He’s probably just a bit stoned, you know… off his face,” said the receptionist after consulting the vet. “Keep an eye on him, but he should be alright.”

Luckily for him, the wee junkie ferret recovered quickly then developed a raging case of the munchies and ate Celine’s dinner as well as his own.

I’ve lost a dog before as the result of an insidious addiction to the hallucinogenic effects of cane toad venom. That dog died in the back of my car on the way to the vet. It was his fifth O.D. He was totally burned, that dog.

Cats don’t often go for toads. Cats are too fudging streetwise to take drugs from dodgy dealers.

Once dogs get the taste it’s hard to break the craving. I’m going to have to watch this little stoner closely from now on.

For example, I’ll have to put my foot down if Pablo starts making noises about wanting to go to music festivals with friends who have names like 'Dude', 'Numba One' and 'Big Daddy'.

If I come home and find Pablo playing the guitar along to The Grateful Dead, lying flat out on a bean bag  and wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt, I’ll have to start administering a urine test on a weekly basis.

And if I discover he’s been watching Cheech and Chong movies, I’ll book him in to rehab. We’ll orchestrate a family intervention and include the cat; although the cat probably lured the toad into the house in the first place seeing as how much she hates the dogs.

Later that night, we discovered the filthy, slimy toad skulking evilly under a bookcase. It was a huge mofo who must have opportunistically stolen in when the back screen door was left open.

Bufo Marinus: Cane Toad

Scotto trapped Bufo Marinus in a plastic bucket and flung it across the road with immense propulsion and at an extremely high elevation. I doubt it survived.

I reckon cane toads might be from where the term ‘hophead’ originated, what do you reckon?

Poster Boy!

Have you ever had a pet poisoned by a toad?