Someone stole a severed human toe from a bar in Dawson City, Yukon, and the victims want it back so they can keep serving it in a specialty cocktail. Oh, Canada!
“We are furious,” Terry Lee said in a press release obtained by the CBC. “Toes are very hard to come by.”
It is called the Sourtoe Cocktail. What’s in it? Your choice of alcohol, and an honest-to-God severed toe. The Downtown Hotel in Dawson City, Yukon serves it at $5 a pop nightly 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Drinkers are supposed to let the key ingredient touch their lips.
Lee, the “Top Captain,” is none too pleased about the theft.
“Stunts like this adversely affect the whole community, not just the Downtown Hotel,” he said. “We fortunately have a couple of back up toes, but we really need this one back.”
It was a new one, and “it was really good,” hotel manager Geri Coulbourne said, according to the outlet. A man donated it after having it surgically removed, and it was cured in salt for six months.
Hotel employees said the culprit was a Québécois who had talked about wanting to steal it.
Local police are investigating.
The tradition dates back to the 1970s, and the frost-bitten, amputated toe of miner Louie Liken. This is not the first time these key ingredient has been…misplaced. Multiple drinkers have swallowed it.
“After it has been through the digestive juices, there is no way you can get it back, so you have to replace the toe,” Lee told Discovery in a 2014 interview.
In 2013, an American purposefully swallowed a toe, and paid the hotel’s $500 “fine.” Since then, the punishment has been increased to $2500.
[Screengrab via Discovery]
