When Louisiana cops yesterday found a “clear crystal like substance” inside a plastic Walmart bag in his pocket, John Combs did not, like some suspects, claim it was a laxative or sugar and corn starch to use in baking a cake.

No, the 47-year-old Combs explained to police that the substance was “salt which he had to treat an in-grown toenail.”

Turns out it was methamphetamine, according to a probable cause affidavit.

After spotting Combs--who was carrying a large wooden stick--walking in the middle of a West Monroe roadway around 4:25 AM Tuesday, a cop asked Combs to put down the stick and then “patted him down for any more possible weapons.”

During the frisk, Combs reportedly sought to keep the patrolman from searching a pants pocket (which held the crystalline substance).

While home remedies for an ingrown toenail can include soaking the foot in a warm Epsom salt bath, the cop who examined Combs’s purported salt “identified the substance as methamphetamine.”

Seen above, Combs was arrested for possession of a controlled dangerous substance. He was booked into the Ouachita Parish jail on the felony charge.