Slippery surprise for customs offers

Customers officers in Miami airport find poisonous snakes pickled in alcohol

Travel Insurance News - 11/05/2009

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Southeast Asia is famous for its weird and wonderful food, medicine and alcohol, much of which is highly illegal in western countries as it is produced from endangered or rare animals.

An example of this is the so called ‘snake wine’, where the entire snake is submerged in alcohol, as used for medical purposed once its poison has dissolved into the liquid. It is not uncommon for snakes, often with insects or other animals such as turtles, to be pickled in this way and sent through the post from Asian countries to places such as the USA, Australia and Canada.

This is what happened last week when United States Customs and Border Protection officers conducting a routine inspection on Wednesday discovered a cobra and other poisonous snakes in preserved in a large bottle. The package had been shipped from Thailand an address in the south-eastern United States.

Sadly, a spokesman from United States Customs commented that this was not an unusual discovery. Although the perpetrator will be tracked down and prosecuted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they regularly discover animals that have been captured and smuggled in this way.

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