My favorite bizzare illegal act was that of my brother’s girlfriend.
She was very attached to her pet bat. It went everywhere with her, curled up in an old sock in her pocket. She had it for years (they are quite long-lived).
One year, my brother accepted a job in England. The GF went with him. The only problem was, what to do about the bat?
England has quite strict quarantine requirements. But the bat would not survive months in quarantine without her. So, she smuggled the bat into England! (If they had caught her, she would have been in serious trouble - fear of rabies. Bats are carriers).
However, England did not agree with the bat. It died.
She was so emotionally attached to the bat, she decided it had to be buried at the family cottage. So, she smuggled the dead bat back to Canada!
I can’t imagine what the authorities would have thought about that.
A friend of mine came back from Japan with a pair of those large horned fighting beetles - a male and a female. They lasted for a while, and even appeared to have mated. Then one day they disappeared. For a while, I was fully expecting an infestation, but it’s been a few years and I haven’t seen any beetle-cover rat carcasses or anything. Keep your eyes open, New Yorkers!
I was suspected of smuggling once.
Just traveling in South Africa and crossed the boarder into Lesotho.
My luck, they’d just had a coup attempt and were searching for weapons entering the country. They took me aside and fine-combed everything in my trunk. A picnic basket with oranges and sandwiches was shredded open. They even held a hard boiled egg up to my face with the expression “Gotcha!” I said, “Take it! Break it! Make me eat it! I don’t care. It’s just an egg!.” He sent me through but took the food. As I was wending my way through the exit queue I saw him grinning and eating the egg.
:eek:
I was buying a lot of groceries one day in the summer at the Giant Eagle supermarket in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. I purchased a small watermelon. When I got home, I discovered that I had two watermelons among my groceries! I don’t know how it happened. Perhaps there happened to be another watermelon left on the bagging area of the checkstand, and it went into my bags by mistake?
Of course, this put me in an ethical quandary. I knew I should return the watermelon. But would they put a returned watermelon back on sale? (This was a number of years ago, and food tampering was very much in the news.) As much as I didn’t like to think of myself as a watermelon theif, I really didn’t want to be a watermelon waster. So I kept the watermelon.
Fortunately, I was going to a party the next day, so I soaked it in vodka, and we all enjoyed my ill-gotten bootymelon.
Unfortunately, this incident has turned me to a life a crime. In the decade since I stole the watermelon, I have also accidentally stolen a pound of asparagus and a black t-shirt.
I think I should turn myself in to the authorities.
When I was young and stupid my friend and I stole a stop sign. It had been knocked down by a car and was just lying there, so on a whim we picked it up and threw it into the back of my friend’s father’s truck, which is a lot harder than it sounds. I never knew how big stop signs really are. They are actually quite large and extremely heavy.
After driving around for a little while all proud of our juvenile deliquent selves, we ended up taking it back where we found it because we had no idea what to do with it.
I needed an engine for a Chevy Vega. My father owned a wrecking yard and told me there was a blue Vega outside the yard and that I could have the engine from it. When I got to the yard the only blue Vega I saw was parked across the street. It was not unusual for my father to park cars there so I hooked it up to the tow truck and took the car home. Did I mention the Vega was in very nice condition and it looked like it could be driven on the street. After removing the engine I took the car back and left it where I found it. A few days later my dad called and asked me if I wanted the engine out of the blue Vega because he was going to crush it. I told him I had the engine but he claimed it was still in the car.
I went to the wrecking yard and hidden behind an old motorhome was a blue Vega, an old rust bucket with faded paint. The blue Vega I removed the engine from was gone. I put 2 and 2 together and whoops. I decided keeping my mouth shut and not saying a thing was the best policy. I took the engine from the rusty blue Vega (you can never have too many Vega engines) and the car was flattened. I left greasy fingerprints all over the nice blue Vega so if figured I would be easy to find but nothing ever came of it.
After a night in the local pub my friends and I went to the park. While we were there we saw a 6ft TREE in the BIN! Which we all though was a bit strange. Well, we got bored. So we dragged the tree out of the bin and onto the floor. We then used someones aerosol can and a lighter to make a flame thrower. Then we set the tree on fire.
Now, this was in clear view of homes so after a while my boyfriend and I made our exit before any police arrived. Well as we were walking down the street our friends run past us and we could here sirens in the distance!
