Costa Rica Ministry of Justice and Peace/REUTERS A guard of the La Reforma Penitentiary holds a pigeon with a little bag filled with drugs attached to its chest in San Rafael de Alejuela, on the outskirts of San Jose, Costa Rica, August 11, 2015.
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A pigeon carrying marijuana and cocaine was apprehended outside a prison in Costa Rica, to the delight of Internet users.
It turned out to be a pouch containing 14 grams of cocaine and 14 grams of cannabis.
Prison officials believe that the pigeon was trained by an inmate to act as courier and transfer drugs to him in prison.
“Drug traffickers are using unimaginable ways to achieve their macabre atrocities”, Paul Bertozzi, director of the Penitentiary Police, told a Spanish news agency.
Orange might be the new black, but the narco pigeon went old school in its Zoo Ave mug shot, sporting traditional dark plumage. Memes about the #NarcoPaloma flooded social media, with some even joking that pigeons in the country are threatening to take over if their “comrade” is not released, according to Tico Times.
The bird, which has affectionately been nicknamed “narcopigeon” (narcopaloma) by Costa Ricans, has been handed over by the authorities to a zoo, where it is being kept under observation before being housed in a larger enclosure.
In Argentina in 2013, police intercepted a bird transporting marijuana from a dealer to clients, while a carrier bird that was used to smuggle drugs into a Colombian prison was captured by authorities in 2011.
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It is the first time that the La Reforma prison has seen an attempt to smuggle drugs of this nature. It was later taken to a zoological bird refuge.
