Want a Smuggled Cracker?

The parrot family loves conversation, is often as prolific as the rabbit family. If one of its number is insulted he may flounce into his cage, slam the door and sulk. Psychiatrists have been known to prescribe talks between a patient and a parrot (to treat the man, not the bird). Last week there was ample evidence that U.S. citizens are again learning to appreciate the parrot family, i.e., parrots, parakeets, budgerigars, lovebirds, etc.

Some 50,000 U.S. breeders are selling 10,000 birds (mostly parakeets) a week at prices ranging from $5 to $1,000 a bird. Yet this booming production is not nearly enough to supply the demand. As a result, parakeet smuggling has become a big-time racket; U.S. customs officials estimate that 70,000 contraband birds were smuggled into the U.S. last year. They intercepted 10,000. The customs men have mapped the trail of an international bird smuggling ring reaching through Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Australia, South and Central America, Mexico and the U.S.

To bring the birds into the U.S. from Mexico, the smugglers have contrived some devious methods. One day last year a customs agent examining a car bound across the border into Laredo, Texas heard strange squawks in the back seat. Just the kids, chuckled the driver. The unconvinced inspector frisked the car, found that the back seat shielded a wire and wooden cage. In the cage were more than 200 parakeets which had been treated to tequila-soaked bread to keep them quiet.

The treatment worked on some of the birds, but a few that could hold their liquor were standing around singing what sounded like Auld Lang Syne--or so the customs inspector said.

A favorite method of the smugglers is to truck the birds to some isolated spot on the border, then have wetback migrant workers carry them across to a truck waiting on the U.S. side. A wetback, fitted with a special harness and carrying cases, can haul as many as 500 birds on one trip.

The racket has progressed so far that one ring of smugglers is now hijacking the feathered cargoes of another.

The federal regulation forbidding importation of psittacine birds (i.e., the parrot family) was established 23 years ago by the U.S. Public Health Service. The reason: the birds sometimes carry psittacosis, a pneumonia-like disease which attacks humans. In recent years, however, medical men have decided that the psit-tacines are not very dangerous. Other birds and animals carry the disease, and it can be reduced to a minor nuisance by treatment with antibiotics. After this news, many cities, e.g., New York, relaxed local bans on parrots. A psittacine fad started, and the U.S. law forbidding imports got run over in the rush.

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