Four yak skulls confiscated at Sea-Tac Airport
May 10, 2012, 1:06 PM | Updated: 2:32 pm
Woody the beagle, a CBP agriculture detector canine, who sniffed his way to the skulls at the airport, looks over the confiscated yak skulls from Tibet. (Image courtesy U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
When a dog smelled something funny around U.S. customs at
Sea-Tac Airport on April 30, agents thought they should
check it out.
A traveler returning from Tibet didn’t think he had
anything to hide.
“He proceeds to say, ‘Well, I have some yak skulls I
picked up while I was in Tibet,'” described Luca Furnare,
with the Seattle Field Office for U.S. Customs and Border
Protection.
The traveler told Customs and Border Protection
agriculture specialists he found two of the skulls while
hiking and bought two more at a village store.
Furnare said that the two skulls bought at the store were
clean, but the two the man had found while hiking were
still covered in bits of dried flesh. It was that smell
that got the attention of the federal beagle, Woody.
While the traveler won’t get to keep the skulls, he did
declare them as souvenirs, so he won’t be prosecuted.
Furnare said the skulls were destroyed under high-pressure
steam to prevent the introduction of animal diseases,
particularly foot-and-mouth disease, into the United
States.
“People need to know what they can and can’t bring in the
U.S. because something like this, that [the traveler] paid
good money for and was excited about, we’re going to take
them and he can’t have them,” said Furnare.
Four yak skulls may seem like an oddity coming through
border control, but it’s not the weirdest thing Funare
said he’s come across.
“We’ve seen things like homemade snake wine,” he said. If
you’re wondering what the recipe for snake wine is,
Furnare said the beverage usually contains cut up snakes,
lizards, various endangered species, and usually some type
of bird.
97.3 KIRO FM reporter Tim Haeck and the Associated
Press contributed to this report.
