Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Dec. 3, 2012

More signs of the apocalypse?

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The Darwin Awards have been with us since the mid-1980s. These annual awards honor individuals who do really stupid things which result in their own demise, or at the very least sterilization, thus eliminating them from the gene pool and allowing the rest of society to function. These awards celebrate survival of the fittest. Over the past twenty-five years or so I've mentioned them once or twice, not only because the winners have inspired me, but also because the idea of a small minority of genuine loons making the rest of us feel better about ourselves by comparison has always been comforting.

One of my favorite Darwin Award nominees was Mr. Thurston Poole, of Des Arc, Arkansas, who went frog gigging with his friend, Billy Ray Wallis on a Sunday night. On their way home, the headlights on Thurston's pickup truck malfunctioned, and he decided it was due to a bad fuse located under the dash near the steering column. There were no replacement fuses, but Thurston did have a .22 caliber pistol with bullets almost exactly the same length as an automotive fuse, so he installed a bullet into the fuse box. Unfortunately, after a few miles that bullet overheated and discharged, striking Thurston's right testicle, which caused him to lose control of the truck and hit a tree near the White River Bridge on State Highway 38. My favorite line from that story belonged to Lavinia Poole, Thurston's wife, who, when notified by hospital authorities of her husband's accident, asked “how many frogs did the boys get?” As it turned out, the whole story, supposedly from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, was a slight exaggeration, in the sense that none of it ever actually happened, but it still served to make the rest of us feel better about ourselves.

Another apocryphal Darwin tale supposedly happened in 1995, when a retired Air Force sergeant managed to remove a Jet Assisted Take-Off (JATO) unit from a military base and install it in the trunk of his 1967 Chevy Impala. On a long stretch of road in the Arizona desert he got his Impala up to speed and then ignited the rocket, which hurtled him at somewhere between 250 and 300 mph for about two miles, until it appeared that he applied the brakes, which melted the tires as well as several hundred feet of tarmac, and sent his Chevy airborne for another three miles until it hit a cliff and disintegrated. All that was found of him were bone and skin fragments, although a bumper sticker asking “How do you like my driving?” was left intact.

Other Darwin nominees include a lawyer who demonstrated the safety of the windows in his law firm's Toronto skyscraper office by running full speed into the plate glass, causing it to shatter, allowing him to plunge 24 stories to his death. That one was true, as was the October 2000 report of a splinter group of Jehovah's Witnesses in Illinois who tested their faith by standing in the middle of a busy freeway (Interstate 55) while witnessing. The article I read did not explain just how much witnessing anybody could do when the vehicles they were witnessing to, or at, were flying by at 75 mph, but one of the ladies in the group–one who'd apparently done this before with no ill effects–was struck by a car and killed.

These Darwin stories, true or not, all serve to reassure us that most of us aren't quite as goofy as our spouses and others may think. We've never floated thousands of feet into the stratosphere strapped into a lawn chair supported by dozens of helium weather balloons, armed with a BB gun to shoot out a few balloons and assist in our descent. We've never jumped off a 100 foot trestle while attached to a 120 foot bungee cord, or crushed ourselves beneath a 1200 pound Coke machine while trying to retrieve a dime. And we've never armed ourselves with a flyswatter and a pair of needle nose pliers and attempted surgery on a hornets' nest, either. Most of us are not suicidal. Then again, given the results of last month's presidential election, we may have to rethink that. If the majority of American voters made the very same Darwinish choice on November 6, then the Darwin Awards have obviously lost some of their luster. You can't have 59 million Darwin Award winners in one year, after all. It's against the rules.

Regardless, here is another story which you've probably already seen on the network news shows. It will undoubtedly qualify as a Darwin winner and make even the dumbest of us feel ... well, almost wise. According to a November 27 article by Carla Ives in the Examiner:


“Edward Archbold, 32, from West Palm Beach, signed up to eat a variety of insects at a pet store featuring reptiles in Deerfield Beach on Oct. 6.

... Archbold was declared the winner after eating dozens of giant cockroaches. He won an ivory ball python trophy. He later felt sick and started vomiting. He was pronounced dead right in the pet store when he collapsed. What wasn't known at the time was that he had also entered a worm-eating contest earlier that evening. Apparently worms and cockroaches should be eaten separately.

The cause of death was just revealed by the medical examiner's office. No toxic substances were found in his body, so he was stone cold sober when he performed his gastronomical feats. The official report of his death says he died from 'arthropod body parts' blocking his airways.”


The Examiner article doesn't explain why anyone would want an “ivory ball python trophy,” or an ivory ball python, for that matter. They aren't exactly the kind of cuddly, affectionate pets your average citizen could warm up to. And of course most of us learned from early childhood that you never eat meal worms and follow them up with giant cockroaches. Most of us, but not the late Edward Archbold.

Oh well, at least that particular Darwinian died knowing he was a winner. Sort of. Too bad he died before the election. He'd have loved it.