SEBASTIAN — Turns out, placing cow tongues pierced with nails and pins on railroad tracks isn’t quite as unusual as one might think. But the placement of two cow tongues on the railroad tracks at Roseland Road, just off U.S. 1, on the afternoon of Sept. 7 was probably the weirdest false alarm the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad had ever encountered.
When a concerned citizen called 9-1-1 to report seeing a woman with something wrapped around her head and wearing a “sort of shift” get out of her car and place a couple of mysterious packages on the tracks, Roseland Road was shut down and the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office took the proper precautions and called in the bomb squad from the neighboring county.
As soon as the mysterious packages were determined to be weird but not lethal, within two hours, Roseland Road had opened back up, and the IRCSO investigators had begun seeking the unknown female who had placed the two cow tongues, each wrapped in what appeared to be aluminum foil and pierced with pins and nails, on the tracks.
While the IRCSO tries to locate the woman, rumors and speculation continue to swirl about, with lots of talk of voodoo and Santeria and a few wise cracks about All Aboard Florida.
Dr. Roger Mittleman, the Medical Examiner for District 19, which includes the area in which the tongues were found, spent four years in Miami during which time he saw a number of such ritualistic practices, attributed to Santeria (a religious cult of African origin syncretized with Christianity and coming to Florida from islands in the Caribbean.)
Although Mittleman has studied and analyzed all sorts of bones and body parts used in such practices, he said he has “never seen a cow tongue or a human tongue stuck with pins” relating to Santeria.
Googling “cow tongue rituals” results in a surprising number of sites, including one gruesome video of a practitioner demonstrating how to prepare a cow tongue for the Shut Your Mouth spell.
Each of the sites that spoke in any way about cow tongue spells agreed on the purpose for the ritual – to keep a person or persons from saying bad things about the individual casting the spell.
All of these sites explain that the name(s) of the rumor-spreading people are to be placed on pieces of paper and stuffed inside the tongue, before the needles and nails are stuck through.
Investigators said no such papers were found in Roseland.
There are several sites that offer cow tongue spells said to keep people from testifying against you in court.
Google even located a “recipe” for the silencing spell, with a long list of ingredients, beginning with “1 beef tongue” and ending with “small bottle of whiskey, any brand.”
Interestingly, several sites mention railroad tracks in conjunction with the spells.
The cow tongue spell recipe contains detailed instructions that end with: “Open the bottle of whiskey and pour some of it on a railroad cross piece. Lay tongue where you poured the whiskey. Ask the God of Iron, Ogun, to take care of this person for you who keeps wagging their tongue in malicious gossip. Leave and do not look back. Take alternate way home.”