For what ever reason, the British and the Australians love garden gnomes. Not real ones, ceramic ones. (The real ones are all gone now, extinct since the 13th century. During a famine, it was discovered that roast gnome was both nutritious and delicious, with predictable results. We suspect the popularity of the ceramic ones stems from a collective guilt over that. But we digress.) Anyway, the Australian Customs Service just discovered the latest outrage by the overlords of the Animal Uprising™. Snakes are disguising themselves as garden gnomes and mailing themselves to people.
During a routine check of international mail on June 10, an officer discovered two snakes and three lizards stuffed inside three of the diminutive garden figurines in a shipment from Britain.
"When the package was opened, the officer spotted several snakes moving about. The package was immediately resealed," Australian customs said Tuesday in a statement.
A day later, officials at the same facility X-rayed another package from Britain and found five snakes and five lizards stuffed inside pottery figures and other ornaments.
The Customs and Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service has a picture of the cleverly disguised reptiles. Now the next time you see that annoying "roaming gnome" in those television commercials, you're going to be wondering just what's in his wallet, won't you? Our advice to people is to use nothing smaller than a 9-iron when opening packages received in the mail. It's the prudent thing to do.
The Animal Uprising™ appears to have stepped it up to a new level – they are employing borg snakes now.