Mayfield presented the specimen to President Calvin "Silent Cal" Coolidge. A bemused Coolidge purportedly declined to touch the horned toad and merely nudged it with his spectacles. A newspaper article reported the incident: As a consequence of the creature's immense fame, horned toads were sold as souvenirs at $2.50 each at the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston, Texas. The ensuing mass capture and export of horned toads for such sales resulted in the genus' precipitous decline in West Texas. According to Texas journalist Boyce House: Death and controversy Soon after his national tour, Ol' Rip died of pneumonia on January 19, 1929. After Ol' Rip's death, the specimen was kept in a tiny satin-lined casket and displayed in the lobby of the new Eastland courthouse. Decades later, in September 1961, Old Rip briefly disappeared from the museum exhibit, and a ransom note demanded $10,000 for his return. After a city-wide search, the specimen was recovered. A year later, in 1962, John Connally visited the courthouse while running for governor of Texas for a publicity event. An impetuous Connally lifted the embalmed creature by its hind leg which abruptly detached. In 1972, Rip's body was again stolen. Soon after, the City of Eastland claimed they had somehow "found" the stolen specimen and returned the object to exhibition. However, museum visitors noted the "recovered" toad now inexplicably had four feet, while the original specimen only had three feet, presumably due to the earlier 1962 incident with John Connally. In 1976, an anonymous letter was sent to newspapers claiming the original, three-footed specimen was still in the thief's possession, and the City of Eastland had replaced the original specimen with a fake. Angry that "the city of Eastland was building its future around a dried-up horned frog," the letter-writer offered to pay $5,000 to anyone who could prove the toad in the courthouse was truly Ol' Rip. Legacy and influence In 1955, Looney Tunes writer Michael Maltese was inspired by the story of Ol' Rip to write an animated theatrical short entitled One Froggy Evening. In the cartoon, a construction worker demolishing a building finds an 1897 time capsule inside a cornerstone. The capsule contains a living frog, retroactively named Michigan J. Frog years later, which is able to sing Tin Pan Alley songs; in particular, "Hello! Ma Baby" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". See also Michigan J. Frog References Citations