Fw: primfocus: 'When I see a monkey skull ashtray, I say, oh, another monkey skull ashtray.'

[Guest guest]

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" Linda J. Howard " <lindajhoward

" Primfocus " <primfocus

Tuesday, 03 December, 2002 04:31

primfocus: 'When I see a monkey skull ashtray, I say, oh, another

monkey skull ashtray.'

 

'When I see a monkey skull ashtray, I say, oh, another monkey skull

ashtray.'

By Mary Pemberton

The Associated Press

 

(Published: December 2, 2002)

 

Wildlife inspectors at Alaska's largest airport have just about seen it all,

from a woman who tried to hide a monkey under a large hat to a woman who had

a bear gall bladder tucked into her bra.

" I've almost become numb, " said Chris Andrews, one of Alaska's three U.S.

Fish and Wildlife inspection officers assigned to Ted Stevens Anchorage

International Airport. " When I see a monkey skull ashtray I say, oh, another

monkey skull ashtray. "

 

The Anchorage airport, which is a hub for international flights to Russia

and the Far East, is the largest cargo airport in the United States and

ranks sixth nationwide for wildlife shipments.

 

In fiscal 2002 ending Sept. 31, the airport processed 6,648 wildlife

shipments, up from 3,850 the previous fiscal year. About 12,000 cargo

shipments were inspected in all.

 

The increase is partly due to the airport in May becoming a designated port

for the import and export of wildlife and wildlife parts and products. The

designation decreased shipping fees and therefore increased shipments,

Andrews said.

 

Andrews and his two colleagues are responsible for Alaska's 13 ports of

entry. They typically check about 65 shipments each day and make about one

seizure -- probably a small fraction of the illegal wildlife that is getting

through.

 

Some airport contraband is on display in a glass case just outside Andrews'

airport office. The case is filled with boxes and vials of Asian

" medicinals " containing extract from endangered Sika and musk deer from

China and Mongolia that purveyors say cures AIDS, cancer, menstrual

problems, malnutrition after childbirth and impotency.

 

The glass case also contains a woman's leopard coat from Taiwan, a crocodile

head purse from Southeast Asia and a guitar from Mexico made from the shell

of a sea turtle.

 

Andrews pulls a cardboard box from under his desk and holds up two bottles

filled with a pale yellow liquid. One with a cobra coiled in the bottom is

from Vietnam. Another, with two decomposing iguanas, is from China. The

" wine " is a popular novelty item with tourists.

" The tequila worm I can handle, but this is awful, " Sue Gadomski, a U.S.

customs officer, said as she shrank from the bottles on Andrews' desk.

Gadomski works closely with Andrews and his two colleagues in the Federal

Inspection Services area of the airport.

 

Inspection officer Mike Kiehn, 47, pulls a stuffed cobra, poised as if ready

to strike, off a top shelf. The item was taken from a tourist coming from

Thailand.

 

" When the animal is killed, the venom becomes solidified, but if you

punctured yourself . . . it could be lethal, " he warned.

 

Inspectors have confiscated monkey skull ashtrays from Thailand, dried dog

penises passed off as seal or tiger parts to increase male potency, and

boxes of sea coral from the Caribbean, Philippines and Indonesia.

 

Andrews said inspectors found two dead migratory birds wrapped in the bloody

hide of a bear legally killed in Russia.

 

Another time, inspectors saw just the toes of a cat poking out of a man's

carryon luggage. The man had two stuffed leopard cats, picked up during his

visit to Vietnam, their mouths open in a nasty snarl with tongues painted

blood red.

 

Inspectors have found bear claws, seal skins, carved walrus ivory, sperm

whale teeth, eagle feathers and pool cues with inlaid ivory from African

elephants.

 

" Most of the time it is ignorance, " Andrews said. Travelers don't know the

items may be illegal or at best require permits to possess.

 

But not always.

 

Inspectors found 10 5-pound bags of Russian caviar worth an estimated

$10,000 under the top layer of neatly folded clothes in a man's suitcase.

The man was a Russian courier.

 

A New Yorker returning from Vietnam was spotted by an airport custodian

" eating snakes " in the airport bathroom, Andrews said.

 

The man had become nervous about bringing his bottles of snake wine through

customs, so he was getting rid of the evidence as fast as he could, spilling

much of it down his front, he said.

Inspectors also found a packet of liquid snake venom taped to the back of

the man's driver's license. Once home, the man intended to refill the

bottles with water and pour in the snake venom and let it ferment awhile

before drinking it again.

 

" He said it helped with his back pain, " Andrews said.

 

Penalties range from confiscation of the illegal item to a $100,000 fine and

one year in jail.

Inspectors receive a five-week training course at a federal law enforcement

training center in Glynco, Ga., to help them identify what is legal and what

isn't. They take a two-hour course to help identify the five different types

of ivory.

 

Inspectors must be familiar with numerous laws governing illegal imports,

including the Endangered Special Act, prohibiting the import of endangered

and most threatened species; the Lacey Act governing trade in wildlife; the

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and

Flora (CITES), a wildlife treaty signed by the United States and more than

130 other countries; the Marine Mammal Protection Act, prohibiting the

import of marine mammals, products and parts; the African Elephant

Conservation Act prohibiting imports of ivory products; and the Wild Bird

Conservation Act, prohibiting the importation of many exotic birds.

Inspectors have testing kits containing a dilute acid solution that reacts

to calcium when a drop is placed on shell or coral. Many times the shell or

coral is in jewelry and is hard to detect.

Inspectors use an ultraviolet lamp to distinguish between ivory and plastic.

Ivory will reflect the purple light. Plastic will absorb it.

 

Inspectors look for holes drilled in the sides of carry-on luggage equipped

with false bottoms. People will drug birds with alcohol to keep them quiet

and put them in a paper towel holder and place them in the hidden

compartment. The compartments are also a popular way of trying to smuggle

live reptiles from Southeast Asia.

 

An airport custodian found a hummingbird stuffed into a pack of cigarettes

discarded in a bathroom trash can.

 

" It ended up dying, " Andrews said.

 

In 1998, an Anchorage woman returning from Korea got the attention of

customs officers because she was carrying $9,900, just under the $10,000

reporting limit. She seemed nervous, so two female inspectors conducted a

strip search.

 

" Under one of her cups was a gold necklace. Under the other was a bear gall

bladder wrapped in a plastic bag, " Andrews said.

 

Inspectors believe the woman sold all but one of the gall bladders she took

to Korea and kept the one because she was worried about how much cash she

would have to bring back to Alaska.

Andrews said there are bear farms in Russia where tubes are inserted into

the gall bladders of live bears to get the extract, believed by some people

to help with high blood pressure, impotency

and rheumatism.

 

Inspectors routinely confiscate bear gall bladder extract packed in small

vials. It either is a chocolate-colored liquid or looks like crushed brown

glass.

 

Andrews said in 1999 he confiscated three types of coral and about 50 sea

fans from an American diver visiting the British Virgin Islands who had

ripped them from the ocean floor.

 

" I was thoroughly disgusted, " Andrews said.

 

The coral and fans were donated to the biology department at an Anchorage

high school.

 

Kiehn said one of his favorite seizures was in 1995, when a woman traveling

from Korea to the Lower 48 passed through customs wearing a very large hat.

 

" The hat kind of went up and down, and we looked, " Kiehn said.

 

The woman had a monkey under her hat.

 

The monkey found a home at a Southern California zoo.