Have you heard the one about the dead monkey in the luggage at Dulles International Airport? Last Friday afternoon, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) canine alerted officers to a suspicious-smelling piece of luggage owned by a traveler from the Central African Republic. Inside the bag, officers discovered three charred monkeys, ten pounds of deer meat and ten pounds of dried beef.
“While we in the United States may find the prospect of dining on charred monkey corpses as peculiar, we respect that certain cultures consider this a traditional delicacy,” said Christopher Hess, the CBP’s director of the Port of Washington.
CBP frequently works with other agencies on incidents like this one, depending on the size and scope of the issue. In this case, the deer and beef were destroyed by CBP while the charred monkeys were taken by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for further inspection.
Somewhere in the U.S. is a disappointed dinner party. A chicken may not be a acceptable substitution for charred monkey. We do have domestic deer and beef.