Bye-bye birdie

OK, I don't know if this story is all that great, but I do know that the main photo that comes with this story is absolutely spectacular. Where to begin? Where to begin?

I guess the best place to start would be with the smoky folks over there at The Smoking Gun. They bring us the story of two California men, a one Sony Dong (nice name) and a one Duc Le (not quite as pretty sounded as Sony Dong, but a fine name) who were indicted on multiple counts of conspiracy, with Le also earning charges of making false statements to the US Fish & Wildlife Service (never lie to Fish & Wildlife! It will always come back to haunt you. THey don't mess around when it comes to the fish, not to mention the wildlife.) and Dong being charged with multiple counts of importing goods by means of a false statement. All charges stemmed from the allegedly smuggling of Asian songbirds, apparently from Vietnam, into the United States.

OK, bird smuggling. An odd way to make a living, I'm thinking, but I suppose you find your niche in life and you go with it. Preferably you're going to want to go with it better than these guys did as to not get arrested and face between 10 to 28 years in Federal prison, but you do want to hone your talents. I don't know, I guess when I hear 'smuggling', I think drugs. I don't hear 'smuggling' and think Tweetybird. Though I don't remember Tweetybird being Asian. He did have a unusual speech pattern, though, so maybe he was.

Here's the point: If you're smuggling birds from Vietnam to the United States and you're flying here, you have to have some place to conceal the birds. And on the alleged flight that the alleged birds were allegedly smuggled on, there were allegedly 32 of said concealed birds. In case you are unfamiliar with the number to bird ratio of quantity measure, 32 birds is a lot of birds.

Here comes the math. 18 of said birds were allegedly in a suitcase. 5 of those birds ended up dying. Quite frankly, I'm surprised any of them managed to survive a flight from Vietnam to the United States in an airplane cargo hull enclosed inside of a suitcase. But wait. We're still fourteen birds short. If they weren't in the suitcase, then where were they?

I'll show you where they were. Behold!

Oh, what the hell is that?! That would be a photo of the man's legs and what would appear to be his bird smuggling support hose. According to The Smoking Gun, Customs and Border Protection stopped the man at LAX and when they "inspected Dong and "found bird feathers and droppings on his socks, as well as birds' tail feathers visible under his pants." " Ewww! Ewww, but DUH! Feathers and poop on his socks?!

The CBP agents, upon further investigation and pantleg lifting, discovered "14 live birds attached to two flat pieces of cloth that were wrapped around his calves. The birds each appear to have been placed in sleeves that were hooked on to the cloth around Dong's legs." Yes! That is exactly what it appears is going on there! I know that they have to be thorough for the reports and for accuracy and to ensure that evidence is presented fairly at any trial that may occur, but my God, sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words (even if most of those words are "Holy crap!"

In case you were wondering, "The birds included three red-whiskered bul-buls (which is listed as an injurious species under federal law), four magpie robins and six shama thrush." " So there you have it! Me, I know what none of those birds look like or ARE, for that matter.

The part that surprises me the most? I'm not so sure that it's the fact he has 14 live birds strapped to his legs. Sure, that's surprising, but I don't think that it's more surprising than the fact that he was able to BOARD THE PLANE in Vietnam in the first place! And if you think I"m impressed that they caught the guy at LAX, I'm not! As the press release statement says that when a search warrant of Le's residence was executed, they found 70 large birdcages and 51 Asian songbirds. Dong said that the birds were purchased for about $50 apiece and that they resold them in the US for around $300-$400 apiece. So obviously, they had done this BEFORE and it worked!!

Grand! Here's the picture that we've painted. We've got a guy from Vietnam getting on a plane. He has 14 SONGbirds strapped to his legs and there are "feathers and droppings on his socks, as well as birds' tail feathers visible under his pants." I can't imagine that the SONGbirds were not want to burst into song at some point during this little caper. But aside from that, feathers out the pants, droppings on the socks, birds on the legs, so SO many clues and yet, apparently, it was working for them!

So, tell me again why in the hell I'm taking off my shoes when I'm getting ready to fly somewhere? It's obviously not to check for songbird droppings on my socks because if it WAS then those guys never would have managed to pull this off AT LEAST ONCE BEFORE!

Man, I feel safer already. Oh, wait. That's right. I don't.

And thanks to The Daily Telegraph, we have photos of other people smuggling a variety of things into a variety of countries. Here's a guy with two live pigeons taped to his legs (there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.):

You know, you really have to assume that they don't let anyone who doesn't know what's going on in the room when they're taking these pictures. Imagine if someone walked in on something like that. There's a guy standing there wearing socks and no shoes with his pants pulled down around his ankles and a bunch of pigeons taped to his legs! If you could muster up the strength to backpedal out of the room, you've probably just run off shouting, "My eyes! My EYES!"

Above is what is known as an 'egg smuggling vest'. It works just like it looks like it would work. There are little pouches on the vest and you put eggs of some kind of creature in there and then you wear it on the plane. (I'm assuming they do this by plane. I'm not imagining this for smuggling via boat.) If anyone asks, you just tell them that you have abs of steel and try to look inconspicuous when you say that.

Here are the eggs that are inside of the vest. These smugglers pay rapt attention to detail, as each egg is clearly labled. I enjoy a tidy egg smuggling vest.

Here is a woman wearing an apron that was constructured to smuggle tropical fish into the country. Did she really think that no one was going to notice that? She's like a human prize rack at a carnival.

Need to smuggle just a few eggs or even just a few more eggs into the country? Run out of room in your egg smuggling vest? Then the egg smuggling underwear are just the thing for you! Behold!

What about other animals, you ask? What about reptiles? Do they smuggle reptiles into the country in the same way that they smuggle birds? No. Not quite. Below is the picture of a snake inside of a ceramic garden gnome to be smuggled into the country. It's really the sort of image that can get you thinking. Or just keep you up all night. I think it's the latter.

You're really going to have to be more creative than whoever the guy was that just crammed some pythons into a suitcase and went happily to the airport. Too bad all of that luggage screening and x-raying got in the way there.


Or this guy who just went with the ol' standby "Frog In A Tube".



And it's cousin, "Bird In A Tube."



I'll tell you this much. After seeing all of these various ways folks try to smuggle animals into this country, if those people would put all of this energy and effort toward a legitimate business, I can guarantee they'd do just fine. AND they wouldn't run the risk of getting arrested and thrown into Federal prison for 10+ years. But that's just me apparently, as these guys don't seem to have any intention of not doing this.

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Birdnapped!

Gordo, the skateboarding parrot is missing. Correct, missing. Oh, wait. The other part? The parrot and the skateboard? Yeah, I thought that was a little odd, too. Here's the scoop on that:

According to the Whittier Daily News, a one 47-year old Fred Mireles of Baldwin Park reported that his parrot, Gordo, had been stolen out of his cage which was on the porch of Mireles' house at 10:30am on Wednesday. Gordo, a green Malaysian parrot from Guatemala, had been known around town as the parrot who could ride a skateboard. Yes, a skateboard. He learned how to ride the skateboard a couple of years ago while MIreles was recovering from being hit by a car. (Why yes, this is as straightforward and as weird as it sounds. It's hard to sugarcoat something so cut and dried.)

"I almost died about two years back and he helped me." See, according to Mireles, two years ago he was hit by a car and "... part of his rehabilitation was exercise. That's when Mireles made Gordo the mini-skateboard." Of course it was. If part of your rehabilitiation was exercise, the first thing that you'd be inclined to do is to make a little skateboard for your Guatamalan parrot. Makes perfect sense to me. It's the natural chain of events, really.

"It pressed me to walk. (Gordo) was my physical therapist." Does insurance cover that? A skateboarding parrot that moonlights as a physical therapist for a recovering mini-skateboard builder? It probably requires a separate form for sure.

All of the avian rehabbing seems to have gone well as "Mireles would drive in his car with Gordo on his shoulder, take Gordo out mountain biking....The two would take daily walks together." Wait a minute. Mountain biking? How come he isn't Gordo the mountain biking parrot? How does he steer with his wings? He's a bird; they don't have opposable thumbs which would make it extremely difficult to grip anything! I think I'd rather hear about the mountain biking than the skateboard. A skateboard you just stand there. Give him a push and Wwhhheeeee! Down the hill he goes. You can get any animal that you can get to sit still long enough to do that! Yep, I'm definitely no longer impressed by the skateboard, but I am thoroughly intrigued by the mountain biking part. Sadly, that isn't what the article was about, so we're all left hanging. But I digress.

Mireles is clearly upset about the ripping off of his Gordo. He tried to explain it to those of us without a skateboarding parrot by saying, "I'm 47 years old and I don't have a child. (He) was like my kid. I'm devastated." Hey, wait a minute. Remember that lady that had the chimp who ripped off the other woman's face? That woman treated that monkey like a child also. Bubble baths. Hair combing. Champagne before bed. (Yep. A grown woman snuggling up in bed to a buzzed monkey after a couple of glasses of champagne each night. NOT normal.) I certainly hope that Mireles and Gordo weren't sharing champagne before bed each night. (I want to say that I hope that Gordo wasn't combing Mireles' hair, but again, he's a parrot and I'd kind of like to see how that's done. Just for curiosity sake. I'm certainly not advocating any sort of human-bird inter-species relations, that's for sure.)

Truthfully though, it's not looking good for either Mireles or Gordo in regard to Gordo being returned. But Mireles says that there's a better chance of the perpetrator getting caught "...because Gordo is so well-known in the area." On top of that, the birdnapper might have a problem on his hands because ",,,Gordo isn't used to strangers." As Mireles explained, "They are up against a can of worms because once (Gordo) realizes he doesn't belong there, he's going to start biting."

Well, there's nothing worse than being up against....a....can of worms? Right. Because they're all wiggly and dirty and stuff....right? Let's just hope Gordo doesn't mind worms and bites the crap out of the birdnapper so that he can return home and hop on his little skateboard and be tugged around the neighborhood once again. Godspeed, little skateboarding parrot. Godspeed.

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At The End Of The Article Armaggeddon

Sometimes at the end of news articles that you read at various online news reporting outlets (or attempting to report what may or may not be news) have a box on the side or the bottom with a bunch of links to other stories that are either related to the one that you just read or that other people who had read the same article had also read. Sometimes these other stories are related your current story. Other times, not so much. But over yonder at Fox News, they seem to think that you need a wide and far reaching variety of news stories, either so you don't miss a thing or so that your selections aren't within too narrow of a category. And for some reason, at the bottom of a story about a bunch of drunken Russian cops beating and burning (yes, burning. As in with fire.) a man to death, there was what could be described as a "melange of whack-a-doodle". It could probably also be described as several other things, but it's not often I can work "melange" into things, as I do not often write about paella.

First, I'll address the crazy Commies. No, actually, first I'll address the horrible job someone did with writing that blurb. It really doesn't tell you much more than the title which says "Officials: Drunk Russian Police Beat, Burned Man To Death." No word on why the three officers were drunk, how they figured out that they were responsible, whether or not it's common for Russian law enforcement to tie one on during their shift, or even who found the body. It was described as being found "in a nearby forest Wednesday with massive burns." Huh. Massive burns. From being set on fire, you say? Interesting. (Note to self: Even though international stories tend to be short, do not let busboy write them, even if he does claim to have "a real way with words.")

Now what other stories could be related to that you ask? Here we go....People who read about the Perestroika Police also read about these intriguing tales:

• Texas Mom Throws 4-Year Old Daughter Into Traffic
  
  
• Police: Husband of Long Island Teacher Choked Her To Death; Staged Broken Down Car Scene
  
  
• Giant Spider Caught On Film Eating Bird In Australian Backyard
  
  
• Pakistani Police Arrest Cleric Who Presided Over Kids' Wedding


• Cheetah Runs Loose On Plane, Bites Baggage Worker
  

Seriously, what the heck is that? I'm pretty sure that at least one of those is a sign of Armageddon. Giant spiders eating birds?! I don't think of that when I think of Australia. I think of koalas, kangaroos, that Crocodile Dundee mate, things like that. Not giant spiders eating birds, for cryin' out loud! And how did that cheetah get loose? Never mind that, how did it get on the plane to begin with?! Now I have to worry about loose and livid flying cheetahs?

I'm sure there was a brilliant mind at work in the choking husband story there. I'll bet The Choker is right at this very minute thinking to himself, "I can't believe the broken down car scene that I staged didn't throw them off of my trail! Dammit! I'm so unlucky!" And of course, that a-hole is one of the guys who (allegedly) kills his wife and then reports her as missing and does a bunch of TV interviews about how much he loves his wife and makes tearful public pleas for her to be returned. When, exactly, did that method start gaining popularity? Was it when Scott Peterson was trying to convince everyone that he was so upset that his wife, Laci, was missing? I think that might have been it. Hey, guys out there thinking about offing your wife and trying the Peterson method, listen up. Before you start choking the Missus, perhaps take a moment to recall how all of that turned out for Scotty-boy there and don't strangle the little lady, OK champ? Grand.

Now, The Choker, also known as William Walsh, has allegedly confessed to killing his wife, Leah. The Choker has an attorney who stated to the media, "If we know anything from recent events, confessions are inherently unreliable, especially when trickery is involved." What recent events would those be sir? And, I'm sorry, did you say trickery? He did indeed say trickery, and when he was asked by the media to clarify what he meant by said trickery, he said, "I am saying unquestionably any confession that they obtain is done by tricks." That still doesn't answer the question. What kind of tricks? Juggling? Cards? Magic? The shell game? Tell us the tricks! I really think someone should have some pretty specific examples if they're going to go throwing words like "trickery" around these days.

What's up with the spider and the bird? Apparently, there is a photo of a lifeless bird trapped in a web near Cairns, Australia, which shows the spider clenching its legs around said lifeless bird. A one Joel Shakespeare, who is "the head spider keeper at NSW's Australian Reptile Park, said the spider was a golden orb weaver." In other news the Australian Reptile Park has a head spider keeper. Now, I don't know if my knowing the particular species of spider is supposed to make this better for me or what. And it really doesn't. Regardless of the fact that most people will respond to such a story by shouting, "Holy crap!" and not "Tell me more about the golden orb weaver and it's day to day existence.", Joel continued by explaining, "Normally they prey on large insects, it's unusual to see one eating a bird." Now is that because a bird is not a large insect or because spider don't eat birds?! He then made everyone reading this story feel tons better by mentioning that "...he had seen golden orb weaver spiders as big as a human hand but the northern species in tropical areas were known to grow larger."

But if you were wondering, Joel said the bird was "a chestnut-breasted mannikin" (was being the key word in that phrase) and that it "appears frozen in an angel-like pose in the pictures." (A chesty breast frozen angel? What is going on down there in Australia?) Then, with his keen deductive abilities he stated that the bird "is likely to have flown into the web and got caught." Do you think, Joel? Huh. So, it's a bird and it just flapped its wings and flew into the web, you say? It didn't just walk in on its own? Are you sure the spider didn't try any of that "Step into my parlor" trickery that I've heard so much about? Joel then added (as if it is supposed to make us feel better), "It wouldn't eat the whole bird." Oh, no, of course not. Because that would be weird. (Not as weird as a goat named Red that wasn't de-horned, but weird just the same.)

The folks over there at news.com.au have the photo of the bird-eating spider (along with a bunch of other stories that should keep me busy for at least a week!). Now, if you're expecting some of that breast-y stuff that was mentioned earlier, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Probably not as disappointed as you're going to be if you are expecting some of that angel-y stuff that was mentioned earlier, but disappointed none the less. And it's really not as bad as you'd think. Then again, we're not the bird. Behold!

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