If you thought your day was going badly, spare a thought for the poor border officers in Melbourne, who inspected a box marked ‘2 pair shoes’ and instead uncovered a plethora of venomous snakes, tarantulas, and scorpions instead – some of them still alive.
Australian Border Force officials x-rayed an international mail consignment from northern Europe on March 14 this year, and found the nightmare fuckery version of ‘12 Days of Christmas‘.
The consignment included:
- three ball pythons, also known as royal pythons
- two hognose snakes
- six vipers, identified as Wagler’s temple vipers— a venomous pitviper species native to South-East Asia
- two Colombian giant tarantulas
- five Mexican redknee tarantulas
- two Brazilian salmon pink tarantulas— considered to be the third-largest tarantula in the world
- four Asian forest scorpions
Department Secretary responsible for biosecurity, Lyn O’Connell, said the pandora’s box was a clear attempt to get around Australia‘s strict biosecurity laws.
“No spider is a match for our biosecurity web, we get our tails up when there are scorpions in the mail and if you try send exotic snakes—beware if we find intentional non-compliance, we bite back with the full force of the law,” she said (in-between spamming the office Slack for animal puns).
“The department works around the clock to enforce Australia’s strict biosecurity border controls—12 million mail items and four million passengers were screened in the 2015-16 financial year, along with the assessment of a million cargo consignments.
“This resulted in 3500 infringement notices and the uncovering of a range of items that posed a risk to Australian biosecurity, including plants and seeds, whole fresh fish, dried lizards, frogs and spiders.
“Anyone who claims to be an animal lover and conceals reptiles or arachnids in small packages and sends them through the mail does not have the best interests of the animals—or Australia—at heart.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources confirmed to PEDESTRIAN.TV that all of the vipers, scorpions and some of the spiders had died in transit. A veterinary officer euthanised the animals still alive.
Photo: Department of Agriculture and Water Resources.
