Cop finds an Alligator stuffed into a suitcase during a routine traffic stop

PHOENIX, Dec 12: Surprised US Border Patrol agents found a four-foot long alligator stuffed into a suitcase during a routine traffic stop in southwest Arizona last week.

Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling said agents detained a driver on Interstate 8 in Yuma, southwest of Phoenix, after drug sniffing dogs were alerted to the odour of narcotics in a car late on Thursday.

A brief search yielded a small quantity of marijuana and the agents asked the unnamed driver if he had anything else they should know about.

''He says 'there's an alligator in there,' and sure enough there was a four-foot alligator curled around in his suitcase,'' Easterling said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Easterling said Arizona state police subsequently arrested the driver on drug possession charges, while the reptile was handed over to the care of the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

The alligator, which appeared to be in good shape, had not been smuggled over the border from Mexico, but was being driven from California to Phoenix, Easterling said.

The US Border Patrol has inspection stations on highways north of the 2,000-mile border to search for undocumented immigrants and drugs smuggled north from Mexico.

Animal seizures at inland checkpoints are not common, although US border police encounter a broad variety of wildlife smuggled both ways over the international line.

Seizures in recent years have included white tiger cubs smuggled to northeast Mexico from Texas, as well as parrots and even tropical fish smuggled north into the United States through busy checkpoints.

Reuters