And Horns on the Toads Page: 47
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JOE WHILDEN, ONE OF THE PEOPLE
settin' there one time, about ten years old, when they had a
great big elephant I'll never forget. I don't remember the lady's
name, but she's standin' no further away from me than from
here to that cot; it wasn't over ten foot. That elephant retched
over with his trunk, took that six-week-old baby out of her
arms and stuffed it in its mouth. Didn't chew, just swallered.
We thought maybe if we could get to him fast enough maybe
the baby wouldn't be dead. Elephants ain't got chewin' teeth;
they just swaller. And so they got a 30-30 rifle and a machine
gun. Shot that elephant seventeen times right between the eyes
with a 30-30, and the elephant just kept swingin' his trunk and
looked at 'em. Didn't even dent his head. So they had to take a
blow torch and cut him half in two. And they found the baby
- whole, swallered it whole, but it was dead."
I don't know exactly how-I'm not artist enough to recon-
struct what Joe had built. Honestly, everybody listening to him
thought he was going to say the baby was alive, but the baby
was dead. "Course it naturally would have been."
"Why, Joe," I said, "you can't put your fist down an ele-
phant's throat. Its gullet's too small." You have to prompt him
like that, you have to kind of play against him with expressions
of disbelief to cause him to sail off the ground. In order to sail,
to really get up into the atmosphere, Joe's like a plane that has
to take off against the wind. If you just swallow everything
he says he finally gets bored and shuts up, but if you'll just
play along, saying, "Oh, Joe, I can't believe this happened" -
he'll rise. He rises on each gust of wind; each gust of disbelief
raises him a little higher.
"Well, I remember when I'se working out at Manchaca
with a bunch of Messicans on the Katy railroad. A boy got
killed. A load of cross ties fell on him and crushed him; so we
buried him out there about fifty foot off the Manchaca Road:
nobody knowed who his folks was er anything. About a week
later I'se going by the grave late one afternoon. I remember
the hame chain broke on the mules and I pulled the team up47
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And Horns on the Toads (Book)
Volume of folk stories and tall tales about the horned toad and other Texas folklore. The index begins on page 235.
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Boatright, Mody Coggin. And Horns on the Toads, book, 1959; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc38856/m1/60/: accessed May 8, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.