"Succu Offed", Way to Die #229, is the second death to be featured in "Up With Death", which aired on December 16, 2009.
Plot
Sean and Joe, a pair of exotic plant collectors, had just stolen a valuable 6-foot Saguaro cactus from the Arizona desert and added it to their collection. They celebrated their newest acquisition by downing a combination of mescal and Peyote buttons (both of which derived from cacti), resulting in them getting higher than a bird. Suddenly, they experienced something rare; a shared hallucination, in which the spirit of the Saguaro that they stole spoke out to them, "You have done wrong! You will pay for your sins! You have disturbed the Cactus Universe! You will die! DIE!"
The hallucination became too much for Sean and Joe, and they ran away in fear, only to meet instant cactus karma. Sean tripped, landed on his back and was impaled on an Agave plant, dying from cardiac tamponade. Joe ran into, ironically, another, smaller Saguaro and the needles closest to his face pierced his eye and punctured his brain.
"Is there a "point" to this story? Don't disturb...the Cactus Universe."
Cast and Interviewees
- Sean Tweedale and Joe Filippone - Collectors (lead: intended victims)
- Dr. Khyber Zaffarkhan - Physical Medicine & Rehab
Trivia
- The man who was killed by the Agave was seen on the pathway dead even though he died on the Agave plant not the pathway.
- In Arizona, the Saguaro cactus is a protected species of plant.
- The Peyote cactus, from which Peyote buttons are made, is a small, spineless (spineless as in having no needles) cactus native to Texas and Mexico, found mainly in the Chihuahuan Desert and in Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and San Luis Potosi.
- Mescal is a distilled beverage made from the maguey plant, a species of the Agave plant found in Mexico.
Lessons Learned
- Idiot Alert Warning: If you try this at home, you will die!!!