The Day I Was Accused Of Smuggling - A Random Pieces Tale

Has anyone else here ever been accused of smuggling by a major international fruit import and sales company?

No? Just me? Damn.

Well, I might as well tell that story then. It's less absurdist tragic comedy than some of the others, but it's got that same "what the fuck" factor that's always sprinkled into my life. This one happened while I was still the director of animal care at a science center/children's museum. Being a zookeeper/aquarist is a wonderful, though incredibly thankless, job. Check out A Walk In My Shoes to learn more!

Now off we go with the story. Being the director of animal care at any facility requires fielding a lot of absurd calls. Everyone and their mother wants to give you turtles they found in their yards, or squirrels, or rabbits they bought and don't want. The list goes on endlessly. A huge portion of people want to donate reptiles or tortoises because they buy them as hatchlings when they're small and cute, and don't have any idea what goes into the care of these animals or even what they eat or how big they get. It's a big problem and one we have to deal with on an almost daily basis. This began with a call sort of like that.

A local warehouse facility called me up at the science center because they had a bit of a unique problem. In one of their international fruit shipments, they found a stowaway. They had no idea how to proceed and asked if it was something we could help them with. What they wanted, specifically, was for me to drive out to them and pick the animal up. They simply referred to it as a "big green lizard". Very helpful description of course, but you work with what you've got, and these gentlemen were not animal experts. They did care though, to their credit, and they recognized that the poor animal had been locked in a shipping crate at sea for an extended period of time and needed emergency care immediately. Of course, I agreed and drove out to their receiving warehouse right away.

Arriving at the warehouse, I got thoroughly lost in their chaotic layout. I ended up driving through their shipping and arrival lanes a few times in circles, trying to figure out where the hell I was supposed to go. Totally normal for me, I have no sense of direction in urban environments. After fifteen minutes of being hopelessly turned around, I finally found the correct building and made it inside. The workers brought out the "big green lizard", now identifiable as an adult green iguana, and after a quick evaluation, the news wasn't good. Severe dehydration, injuries from being jostled around during the loading and unloading process, and a good deal of starvation to boot. They asked us to please take it off their hands and do what we could to take care of it. I agreed and headed back to the science center.

Between the warehouse and the science center, the iguana died. Moved to the great rainforest in the ether. Or wherever iguanas dream of going. When animals die in zookeeper or aquarist care, one or more of a few things can happen next. In the case of this iguana, we opted for a quarantine freeze of the body, for safety and health reasons as well as for basic protocol reasons. Animals are usually held in some capacity for recordkeeping purposes for a predetermined period of time. Again, in this case, we initially opted for a 30-day minimum. Not that it would have mattered much. Iguana was bagged and tagged, and we went on with the day.

It wasn't even an hour later before shit hit the fan in the most ridiculous way. The office staff fielded a call from the fruit company - the owners of the crate the warehouse workers recovered the iguana from - who were, without provocation, in full rabid attack mode from the very start. There was no opportunity for any explanations, no request for our side of the story, and no basic professional courtesy (or human intelligence) shown at all. This was stereotypical "evil corporation" behavior at its finest.

The Shit, The Fan, Everything In Between

A lot happened.

The office took the first call. The office support team, naturally, panicked and fielded the call to the executive director of the science center. Therein was the first mistake: the director of the science center was completely inept at any kind of stressful situation and had absolutely no idea at all about any kind of laws, rules, or regulations regarding any animals. Period.

The director panicked, and told the Evil Corporation to call me directly. She then further panicked and called me on the number she gave to them to warn me that she gave them my number and would be calling.

The Evil Corporation tried to call me - of course I was at the time on the phone with the director, who was having a terrible time trying to explain what the hell she was talking about.

The Evil Corporation call went to voicemail. Not a good thing, when they've been told they can reach me and are already bordering on panic-induced rage of their own.

The Evil Corporation left a voicemail, which essentially amounted to them saying that I am in big fucking trouble, though not specifying further.

The Evil Corporation calls back upstairs, and the director once again takes the call. The Evil Corporation proceeds to turn the director into a ball of blubbering ooze, kowtowing in her own office and at a total loss as to what the hell to do or say. Bowled her over like a pudding pop hit with an eighteen-wheeler.

The director again calls me, now in tears, telling me that I've violated international laws and the cops are coming and the wildlife resources commission is coming and everyone is coming and obviously the world is ending and oh god.

You get the idea. Everyone was panicking, and I hadn't even taken a call from anyone yet to defuse the situation. But by this point, it was way too late. The Evil Corporation had had enough, and they made every call to everyone they could find a number for. Finally, the wildlife resources commission officer who was called actually decided "Hey, I should talk to this guy", and he called me directly. Nice guy who didn't want to drive three hours if he didn't need to, so he wisely decided to phone first and find out what on earth was happening.

While I was on the phone with the wildlife officer, the police showed up at the science center. Apparently, Evil Corporation had literally called anyone who would listen, trying to cover their own asses and in a state of full damage control. Ironically, they were doing more damage than they were controlling, but that's often how it goes in my experience. They had accused me of "assisting in smuggling an illegal invasive species" into the country.

What the actual fuck.

Let's break this down to what actually happened here, shall we? Evil Corporation's packing people failed to do an adequate job of inspecting their cargo before sealing the crate and sending it off overseas. In their failure, they sent an invasive species to the US - a green iguana. The shipment arrives, and some unaffiliated warehouse guys open the crate and find a starving, half-dead animal. They do the right thing and call an authority on the situation in an attempt to save said animal, not aware of any international law they may be violating, naturally. They call me, I respond appropriately and collect the animal for medical reasons, knowing quarantine protocols inside and out, and not intending to release the animal to the wild and thus violate any laws. Evil Corporation finds out, hits the oh shit button, and the chaos storm begins to coalesce.

All caught up? Good, off we go.

I'm on the phone with the wildlife guy, the cops are accusing me of smuggling, and upper management is useless. That about sums up where we are. Mostly the police are just fucking confused. They've got Evil Corporation telling them one thing - a thing they barely understand to begin with - and myself, and now the wildlife officer, telling them something else. And they've also got the executive director trying to tell them god knows what else while they attempt to shush her and get the actual story because she's talking a thousand miles an hour and mostly it doesn't make any kind of sense.

Eventually, after we got the director to buzz off and the wildlife resource office and I reached a simple solution - I provided pictures of the deceased iguana, and proof that it was frozen and agreed to keep it on ice for 90 days - the situation was resolved. The police remained completely at a loss as to what they were even doing there, the wildlife office was just tired and didn't want to deal with the stupidity of the situation and I was basically just giggling at the absurdity at that point. This could only happen to me, naturally. That's how stupid the whole thing was. Evil Corporation spokesperson was annoyed, but couldn't do anything else, so they finally backed off and let the whole thing go. The executive director remained flustered, but what else was new honestly.

It was the talk of work for a good long time. So much excitement! And yet for me, it was just another random story for the pile, to later mine for some comic relief in a humor blog. Such is my life - a series of Random Pieces.