Dead Avian Mule.....

There was a strange story on New Zealand radio yesterday concerning drugs being smuggled into a prison via a dead pigeon. The offending mule was thrown over the wall of the prison yard, after which the prisoner caught it. Alas, he was caught by the guards and had both his mule and its booty confiscated.

What touched me more than anything was the naivety displayed (probably wilfully for the benefit of his listeners) when talking to the prison spokeswoman. It did not transpire until the end of the interview that the bird in question was a pigeon and not a hmm, penguin or albatross. ‘Surely you’d need a big bird to fit drugs into?’ he said.
‘Well, no’, she replied. ‘People today still assume the drug of choice would be cannabis, for which you would need a bird the size of an albatross. These days the drug of choice in prisons tends to be crystalised methamphetamine, for which a pigeon suffices as it can be measured in spoons’.

Crystal meth! The same evil which has plagued rural Montana!

Can you imagine such an interview taking place on the BBC? No chance. People know that the drugs of choice taken in prison would be cocaine or more likely heroin, which can easily be measured in teaspoons. The Brits are not so naïve to assume that somebody would go to that trouble for a bit of weed. I assumed immediately the bird was a damn pigeon and had no need for it to be explained to me!

To speak frankly I don’t know whether this is something I like or dislike about this place, as it is only a sign of its isolated nature and its provincial tendencies. Yet at the same time it makes me slightly nostalgic for the innocent days of my parents.

What more can I say?