Illegal Oranges and other escapades

Did you know that it is illegal to carry citrus fruit into the US? Even four lovely, round, fine specimens of Florida’s finest seedless navels weren’t allowed to return to their homeland as part of our road trip snack.

Road trip, you say? Indeed.

Stephanie and I are on our way to Memphis, and eventually Nashville.

First, however, we had to deal with US Customs and Homeland Security.

No wait at the border, we sidled up to the gate in my yellow truck. I flash my most winsome smile, and answer the guard’s questions. Everything went well until he asked if we were harboring any fruit.

No sirens went off, but we were told to pull to the side and speak with the “agricultural specialist” who would assist us with our fruit infestation.

Walking into the office and up to the counter, a fresh-faced lad in uniform greeted us and took our paper. After five hours of driving, I was a little giddy, so I had to stop myself from asking if he was standing on a stool. Tall! He was probably pushing ten inches over six feet, and a strong wind would have blown him over.

He questioned us about our illegal oranges, and asked a series of questions about other food and plants. I thought Stephanie was going to fall over when he asked if we had any meats (I had to bite my tongue myself). As it was, we were making him blush.

I had to keep telling myself that teasing US Homeland Security Guards is really not a good idea. But I was so tempted.

In order to save us the same trouble in the future, our kindly friend gave us two sheets of paper, with Canadian and US food/flora/fauna restrictions on them. Then, he went off with my keys to claim the illegal fruit immigrants from our lunch bag.

While we were waiting, Steph and I started reading through the list of what we could bring back with us into our home and native land.

In the meat section, it had a list that was something like, “raw poultry, lamb, beef, armed bison….”

Armed bison? What the heck is that? We just cracked up, and came up with a few vivid depictions of armed buffalo taking revenge on the white man, or genetically modified animals…”now, so much more helpful around the farm with a few extra arms!”.

By the time our friendly guard came back, we were fit to be tied.

He cleared us to continue on, returned our passports, and was turning to go…

I couldn’t let it go. “So, what exactly is an armed bison?” I asked.

“A what??” he exclaimed. And blushed.

“An armed bison. Here on the Canadian claims form,” I say, pointing out the phrase.

He blushes again, thinks for a minute, and says, “I believe that’s supposed to say FARMED bison.” While trying not to crack up, as Steph and I were.

“Thanks for pointing it out,” he says. “We’ll tell the guys over there (pointing at the Canada customs building) about the typo.”

Oh, to be a fly on the wall that day…

We bailed out of there quickly, before our excessive laughter resulted in a drug search.

Citrus free, we gassed up and hit the American highway.

Stay tuned- more monkeyshines are on the way!