A drug-smuggling pigeon was detained after it was caught attempting to sneak drugs in a prison, Costa Rican authorities announced Tuesday.
The pigeon, dubbed as "narcopaloma," caught the attention of a prison guard when it landed on the courtyard of La Reforma prison in San Rafael de Alajuela, a city near the Nicaraguan border, Fox News Latino reported.
The suspicious guard lured the bird with food and saw a small black pouch tied to its breast. Upon inspection, the guard saw the pouch contained 14 grams of cocaine and 14 grams of marijuana, according to The Register.
Prison authorities said that the bird may have been fed by an inmate in La Reforma's medium-security wing, and that someone brought it out in order to attach the drugs to it and let it fly back to it. This was reportedly the first time that a pigeon was caught smuggling drugs into La Reforma, although many other similar instances have happened elsewhere in the country.
Prison police chief Pablo Bertozzi told reporters that the pigeon flew specificially to the medium-security wing, indicating that the drugs "weren't for delivery to just anyone," according to The Register.
"The real problem is that there is a lot of [drug] consumption. If there weren't consumers, the drugs wouldn't be arriving," Bertozzi said, The Telegraph reported.
The Costa Rican Ministry of Peace and Justice posted the incident on Facebook and Twitter, which quickly became viral. 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.
Thug Life #NarcoPaloma pic.twitter.com/IxrcmqkeLg
— Ꮲმσ - Ꮲმσ ⭐️ (@paotorresv) August 12, 2015
The drug-smuggling pigeon was taken to a zoo. It is temporarily being kept there for observation, after which it will be transferred to a bigger cage where it will remain a jailbird.
"Because of the way it came to us, it can never be freed," a zoo worker said.
