Banned by Customs

Ray: Well so Shirley, tell me about your career as a Customs inspector.

Shirley: Yes, many years ago in a previous lifetime, I worked as a Customs Officer in Australia. And, I don’t know if you know but that means … basically taking control or monitoring our borders and checking what comes in and out of the country.

Ray: Well that sounds pretty interesting.

Shirley: Yeah, it had its moments.

Ray: Like for example

Shirley: Well, Australia has very strict quarantine regulations so we’d often get people trying to smuggle in prohibited food or seeds or plants and I remember one time there was a man who had an entire sapling, a small tree strapped to his body. He had the roots kind of in his shoe and it was strapped to his leg all the way up his body and along his arm and of course his clothes on top so that we couldn’t see them.

Ray: Well that’s a, are now you sure he was a person and not an “ent”?

Shirley: I don’t know. He was doing a good disguise if he was in fact a walking “ent”.

Ray: That’s true, so what’d you do to this poor guy?

Shirley: We didn’t do so much to the poor guy, I think he probably

Ray: so what did you do to his poor tree then I guess.

Shirley: Well his tree was confiscated and would be destroyed. Probably he was fined and went to court and would have to pay a fine.

Ray: What other things do people smuggle?

Shirley: All sorts of strange things. Sometimes they smuggle things that they don’t even realize are prohibited. So for example canned foods like pate or canned meats are also completely prohibited

Ray: Oh boy

Shirley: Yeah, I mean a lot of those things they can hold, for example foot and mouth disease, I think, is resistant to very high temperatures and it’ll last for about seven or eight years. So those things are also prohibited. Birds, which is pretty sad because when people bring in something like birds or small animals the death rate for the animals is extremely high so

Ray: Goodness, yes.

Shirley: Usually only about ten percent (10%) survive and if they get caught, then they can’t have them anyway.

Ray: Can’t imagine how, if you were trying to smuggle a bird I have visions of somebody anasthetizing the poor thing and, stuffing it into their backpack or something of that sort and

Shirley: Yeah

Ray: that can’t be good

Shirley: there’s lots of imaginative ways to do that but all in all, none of them are very good for the birds.

Ray: Any reptiles?

Shirley: Yeah well, people do smuggle them in, although actually in the case of Australia I think we have a bigger problem with them going out because Australia has, I think, the highest number of venomous reptiles in the world and also different types of reptiles so people taking them out illegally is a big problem. I personally never saw any, fortunately. I actually quite like snakes but I have a healthy respect for them so I don’t really want to be, you know, engaging with them on a one-to-one personal level.