These fun little critters are the subject of a documentary which clearly ranks among the five oddest things I've ever seen, and may very well be right at the top (though there's always Being John Malkovich for competition). The documentary, Cane Toads, was produced by Australians, and, associated with Australian sense of humor, produced in me, an American, more of a feeling of dislocation and wonder at the oddness of things than a desire to laugh out loud. They say that humor results from the release of nervous tension; this seemed to play with that intuition by continuing to build it throughout--it was like a joke without a punchline, but which describes something so odd it's as though there's almost an attempt to subtly imply a punchline. The problem is, there are so many weird things going on, it's hard to tell which of them should be the focus of such a denouement. Some examples:
- There's a guy who talks about how he has developed an addiction to smoking an extract from the poisonous toads. Funky on its own, but when he tells the interviewer that the first several times he tried it, he became violently ill, the viewer is left with no choice but to write off humanity as an evolutionary dead end.
- A little girl, about five years old, plays with these toads as though they were a cross between pets and dolls. Apparently quite docile, they submit to being cradled, sat at tea parties, and even DRESSED UP IN DOLL'S CLOTHES. It's important to understand, these things get huge--we're talking Chucky-sized, here, not some wimpy little Barbie-magnitude things.
- One guy, who works with animals, hates the toads. Not exceptional in itself, but when he talks repeatedly and with strong feeling and gruesome detail about how horrible they are, because one of his more predatory charges ate one and died, the oddity of this man's obsession sets in.
I can't really describe it, and I'm not entirely sure I recommend it, but it's awfully surreal.