Drop Your Pants for a Song

Do these birds go with these shoes?

Anyone who travels knows the ever-increasing list of items that cannot be taken onto an airplane: nail clippers, pocket knives, box-cutters, razor blades, scissors, axes, meat cleavers, saws, cattle prods, ice picks, and pieces of glass, metal and wood carved into fine points. Speaking of sharp, Chelsea Handler should be added to the “prohibited” list any day now.

But today, we must now add songbirds to that list. Yes, those little flying chanteuses are not allowed to travel. Who’da thunk it?

Apparently, Sony Dong didn’t think it. Or maybe he did because he strapped more than a dozen songbirds to his body to conceal them as he boarded a flight from Viet Nam-to-Los Angeles. According to one story, what gave Dong away was the, “bird feathers and droppings on his socks, and [the] tail feathers…peeking out from under his pants.”

What’s strange is that these were songbirds — birds that sing. Why wouldn’t the sound of singing coming from a man’s pants tip off authorities before the droppings on his socks and the feathers on his behind? Were the birds on strike during the international flight? Were they too engrossed by the in-flight movie to give up a note or two?

Then again, people ask the same questions about Barbra Streisand when she travels?

And if the birds did warble a tune between Viet Nam and L.A., who was Dong sitting next to on the plane? Marlee Matlin?

Dong was arrested by customs agents and charged with illegally importing wildlife. If smuggling wildlife becomes a trend, this blogger recommends pigmy hippos. They can fit into a duffle bag and the overhead compartments of most airplanes. They are the Verne Troyers of the animal kingdom.

As an added bonus, none of them have made a sex tape…yet.

Yogi Bear Put Before Death Panel

Bearly caught red-pawed

The most successful and elusive criminal of the animal kingdom has been put down. Yes, life of crime of Albino Basin Male No. 191 has come to an end.

According to one report, the approximately 20 year-old grizzly bear allegedly responsible for multiple home invasions in the Condon, Montana area was captured and euthanized recently. I write allegedly because there was no trial, no witnesses and no confession. What is this, Guantanamo Bay?

ABMN 191 was captured when he returned to a home he had previously broken into. After eluding capture for so long, you’d think the old bear would be smarter than that. Even the most morally upright and law-abiding citizen knows the first rule of criminal activity: never return to the scene of the crime. At least not without a disguise.

Surprisingly, the reason given for euthanizing ABMN 191 was not because of his alleged crimes. It was because of  “[his] age and the condition of [his] teeth, which had been damaged by years of chewing on homes and refrigerators.”

Yeah, right.

And I killed that spider in my bathtub not because it had wandered into my personal space, but because it might drown.

Wait…chewing on homes and refrigerators? He broke in to eat plaster and metal? He couldn’t have done that outside the home? Maybe Old ABMN 191 wasn’t the smartest bear in the sleuth. No matter. Yogi wasn’t exactly a member of Mensa either.

I.Q. deficiencies aside, could it also have been that the bear’s age and subsequent life expectancy didn’t justify the extensive dental work he required? Old 191 may have been the first victim of those mythical death panels. But if stupidity and bad teeth qualified anyone to be put down, the entire state of Alabama would look like the surface of the moon by now.

I don’t know if bears age at the same rate as cats and dogs, but 20 seems pretty young to be euthanized, especially for having bad teeth. Even if the underlying reason for putting Old 191 down was actually for his alleged crimes, who’s to say he wouldn’t have turned his life around? After all, he was still a kid in human years.