Witness to terror.

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: Humor - Oklahoma City federal building bombing - Column - Cover Story

There's a toad in the Four Corners area of the Southwest, whose skin secretes a poison when it's frightened. So, the deal is, if you attempt to pick up one of these amphibians, it will start cranking out this noxious fluid to repel you back to the gnarled tree stump from which you crawled. Now, if you lick this toad sweat, you will experience a hallucinogenic high. This practice has become so widespread, some states have made licking this toad a crime.

Did you hear what I just said? They had to pass a law against toad-licking. Before you have a law, you have to have a pretty serious problem, right? Now I just have a few questions here.

Number one: Exactly how high do you already have to be in order to lick a sweaty toad?

Two: How many animal/fluid mixtures did these pharmacological pioneers go through before they stumbled onto the correct formula? "Bring on the weepy wolverine if you will." "And now, the hedgehog with the sniffles, please." "Viola, ear wax from the rare albino dwarf goat. Going to need a bong for this."

And three: Do you think this procedure could be accomplished with small members of the salamander family? I'm thinking of newts in particular. A certain Newt to be specific. The squeezing thing. Someone fax Carville. It's worth a shot.

* Boston, Massachusetts, where Roger Clemens promised to retire after the Red Sox win the pennant this year. Yeah, and I promise to sprout gills after the ice caps melt. So the heaviest of the weighted ones wandered up to New Hampshire to announce his candidacy for President. Bob Dole is considered the frontrunner, due to the fact that he has amassed the largest stockpile of personalities to choose from while running. "Mr. Malignant," the cute little character he ran as during the 1988 elections, has allegedly been retired. But many sources say Newt Gingrich obtained a copyright on the persona, so the best we'll probably see in the next eighteen months is "Mr. Measles," while Phil Gramm dons the "Mr. Ebola Virus" garb. The Kansan ran in 1980 as the "Plains Moderate," but was crushed by Ronald Reagan's "Mr. Magoo," and in 1976, as Gerald Ford's running mate, he and Fritz Mondale both played "Mr. Sominex" in the first Vice Presidential debate, a tape of which is still used by all the major sleep-disorder clinics as the ultimate litmus test.

* San Francisco, in the state of California, which believes if the bombers had taken out the Los Angeles County Courthouse, they'd be on talk shows as...