the blog quebecois

Use toilet paper sparingly, experiment with natural toilet paper substitutes including stones, vegetation and snow. Carry out all used toilet paper, brown plastic bags containing a drop of bleach make this more pleasant. Several forest fires have been started by burning toilet paper and burying paper in catholes is unacceptable as it doesn’t decompose. We can, however, bury used "TP substitutes" in the cathole, another reason to test these options. Know what you are using! Poison ivy and stinging nettle have been proven incompatible as a TP substitute.

Tips for campers, courtesy of the Sierra Club, via Professor Bunyip.

I myself have solved this problem by never going camping. Nature, you might know, consists mainly of:

a) bugs;
b) dirt;
c) bad weather;
d) carnivorous animals; and
e) lousy substitutes for toilet paper,

so I'd rather stay indoors and play Top Spin Tennis on my Xbox.

Still, you've got to admire their willingness to experiment. It must be one of those trial-and-error things -- "Hmmm. How about . . . cactus?"

We all owe a debt to the first guy who caught a lobster and said: "Now this looks like good eatin'!"

Or as the Sierra Club would have phrased it: "I wonder if I can wipe my bum with this thing?"