(From MORE Memories of an Okie Boomer)

Every civilization has a rite of passage where boys become men.

American Indian braves had to kill buffalo. Africans had to kill a lion. And on Nebraska Street, you had to pick up a horny toad with your bare hand.

Even if you had been told a thousand times that horny toads didn’t bite or sting, when you stood over one for the first time, the last thing in the world you wanted to do was grab it.

Sure they were small, but they were still stinkin’ dinosaurs, complete with horns and scales and weird eyeballs and tongue canons.

Who could say for sure that they didn’t have some kind of prehistoric poison that would kill you dead?

But eventually you had to just suck it up ­– if you wanted to be a man – so you’d reach down over a horny toad as he was eyeing up a dinner of red ants.

Then you’d spread your fingers wide and ever-so carefully clamp down on the outside of his body – ready to drop him and run like crazy if he looked like he was going to sting or bite or shoot fire out of his butt.

My first grab was really scary, especially after the horny toad puffed up and started to shoot blood out of its eyes.

But pretty soon I realized that horny toads weren’t scary, they were just awesome miniature dinosaurs.

Catching and releasing horny toads became a staple of growing up on Nebraska Street. 

You’d catch them, turn them over and rub their bellies until they went to sleep, then stick them in your shirt pocket and take them home for a couple of days.

We loved horny toads and played with them a lot, but we had to admit that they were guilty of under-performing. 

We knew that because Steve and I had seen all the Godzilla movies, where the monster wrecked half of Japan.

We believed that, with just a little more effort, a horny toad could do the same thing on Nebraska Street.

We didn’t expect it to totally go Godzilla and burn down houses or anything.

But it would have been GREAT if it would have embraced its inner battle-lizard and gone to war at least once!

We tried every way we could think of to motivate horny toads, beginning with putting them together in a shoebox .

We’d give them a pre-game pep talk, then pit two of the same size against each other.

Then one big against one small, or one big against two or three smalls.

Maybe, one horny toad against a June bug, or a locust with his wings taped down, or a cricket, or a Mayfly or even a tiny frog.

I even snapped a bow-legged toy cowboy onto a horny toad’s bare back one time, and then tied a string between it and a battery-powered Army tank.

That could have been an awesome tug of war or a bucking bronco ride!

But the tank couldn’t make the horny toad budge, and he didn’t show any interest in bucking the cowboy off either.

What a wasted opportunity!

The only success we ever had with motivating horny toads was thanks to Bob Jenni, the animal guy who was always showing off lizards and snakes on the Foreman Scotty Show.

Bob said that animals needed to be in their native environment to thrive which, turns out, didn’t involve shoe boxes filled with Army tanks and June bugs.

We knew horny toads loved ants, so we took some to the best ant beds at Cleveland Elementary.

They seemed to really appreciate it from Day 1, and they happily ate the tiny black ants, the bigger red ants and even the biggest black ants.

They would stand on the ant hills, move their heads a little, “acquire” their lunch targets, and then ZOT.

They never missed.

A few times they’d ZOT up a tiny dirt clod about the same size and color of an ant, but they’d quickly hork it right back out and start ZOTTING again.

There were also some massive red ant beds at construction sites on Nebraska Street, so we started taking our best horny toads to those.

For them, it was like going to Dairy Queen for a chili dog! For the red ants, it was like having Godzilla drop in for dinner.

The ferocious red ants would swarm all over the horny toads, doing their best to sting them to death. But horny toads are armor plated, so duh.

Eventually, the smartest ants would start attacking the horny toad’s unprotected eyeballs.

But the horny toads would just blink their eyes, knock the ants to the ground and ZOT them right up.

I tried to sort of “evolve” Bob Jenni’s environmental philosophy by introducing Army men and tanks onto the ant beds, thinking that maybe the horny toads would get caught up in the moment and start wildly ZOTTING everything.

I even glued some juicy ants onto my Army men with drops of honey.

But nada.

So I started bringing horny toads home again for a few days at a time, just to look at them more than anything.

I kept them in Mom’s special shoeboxes from The Webb.

You could push the lids down, and they would click onto the rest of the box. They were brilliant for keeping all kinds of wildlife, especially horny toads.

The need for more secure horny toad facilities had become obvious some months earlier.

I had brought home the cutest little baby horny toad you ever saw in your whole life. It was barely as big as a quarter.

I was playing with it one morning when Mom started bellowing about me being late for school again!

So I grabbed the first things I saw on my desk — two oyster shells. I put the horny toad in one shell, and covered him with the other, leaving a little gap for air to get in.

Incredibly, when I got home that afternoon, he had escaped!

I immediately searched my bedroom and closet but found nothing.

Then I moved the search and rescue into the hall, under the pretext of shooting marbles underneath the Encyclopedia Britannica book case.

Then I looked in the bathroom.

Nothing.

So I had no choice but to search Mom and Dad’s bedroom, which was super risky.

If I got caught, I could make up any story I wanted to, but Mom would sweat the truth out of me.

And that would mean horny toads were forever banned from inside the house!

So I snuck into their bedroom, did a quick flashlight sweep of the floor and under the bed, then ran right back out.

Again, nothing.

I had to admit the odds of finding the horny toad were pretty slim.

Even if he survived the fall from my desk, which would have been like me falling off the Empire State Building, he probably would have already starved to death.

So I said my sad goodbyes, did my grieving, and soon forgot all about him.

Until the next night when I heard my Mom shout, “WILLIAM MARK MOORE!”

I raced into her bedroom, fearing the worst.

She stuck out one of her pink house shoes, and I saw my baby horny toad snuggled deep inside, just cute as he could be.

That’s when Mom made the rule that, henceforth, any horny toad staying overnight in our house had to be kept under lock and key in a Webb’s shoebox. 

She added that this particular baby horny toad had worn out his welcome and was to be released the next day.

It all worked out great, because we had Show & Tell that day at school.

I told of his daring escape and eventual capture in Mom’s pink house shoe, which brought down the house.

Then at recess, I took him to a big ant bed, said my goodbyes, and let him go, just like Bob Jenni would have wanted. 

(From: “MORE Memories of an Okie Boomer: Growing Up in Norman in the 60s and 70s; available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle)

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