Strange toys intercepted at US airports
A shipment of plastic toys turned out to have something a little more alive inside them at the Cincinnati port of entry of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) last week.
Agriculture specialists were inspecting incoming freight from Barcelona, Spain, when they noticed some unusual padding around a particular toy character. They soon realised the oddly shaped items were smuggled praying mantid egg cases. Mantids naturally occur in the USA, but some foreign species are increasingly traded as pets - illegally.
Previously this year CBP found other such shipments transiting through Cincinnati. Their colleagues in Philadelphia found smuggled mantid egg cases in a computer gaming mouse, and in February, agriculture specialists in Louisville found egg masses and larvae concealed in Xbox controllers. (ah)