Stuff You Should Know - How the Beagle Brigade Works

Episode Date: June 13, 2017

If you've ever been to an international airport, you've probably seen one of the keenest spotters of illegal contraband - The Beagle Brigade! These cute dogs aren't after drugs or bombs, they're carefully trained to sniff out agricultural products. Learn all about this furry group of crime stoppers in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention, anyone with access to an airplane. We're going to be in North America for our North American 2017 stuff you should know, live tour, and we're kicking it off in Toronto, August 8th, and Chicago, August 9th.

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There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Rowland's over there. So this is Stuff You Should Know, the Beagle Brigade Edition. Yes, another, I guess we covered drugs nippers? Yeah. But not, or did we do Seeing Eye Dogs as well? We did.

Remember, Cause Seeing Eye Dogs is actually a brand name. It's one of those... Oh, like a Band-Aid? Yeah, or Kleenex or something. That one was a great one. Yeah, so, I mean, is this the last job that dogs have? We didn't cover dogs that serve as pack animals yet, so. Oh, that's right, yeah, like herders.

Yeah. That'd be good. Or Lumberjack dogs. Oh, that's true. That's right, or dogs that are sous chefs. Right, so yeah, we've got a big, big long suite coming. I thought it was done, sorry. No.

No, but this one might be the most adorable of all of them. Yeah, and this one was, I was always confused. I always thought the Beagles at the airport, because as you will learn, Atlanta is, they're trained here outside of Atlanta. But I thought that the Beagles were, I just thought they were drug sniffers. Or bio sniffers, or everything sniffers.

Oh, I see, no? You could have a big old suitcase full of cocaine and walk right past that dog and be like, you know, that's good to know, you know. Sure, for the next time you're smuggling cocaine in a suitcase. Yeah, once you make a pest of Beagle, you're home free. But don't have a head of lettuce. No, because those Beagles will pounce on your neck

and chew your throat out. Or don't have a whole hog. Can you believe that story? Totally. So this one was, I think it was in Atlanta, at Hartfield Jackson Airport. Yeah. And there was a woman traveling from Peru

to the United States with a roasted pig, an entire roasted pig in her bag. And I mean, it was very sweet, you know. She was just trying to bring home a holiday meal for her family. Yeah, it was Thanksgiving, I think, right? Yes, she smuggled in a roasted pig. Yeah, and it was a little, you know, it was big.

Well, yeah, pigs tend to be, I mean, it didn't say a suckling pig. Pig, I assumed it was a big old pig. Well, it was a picture of it. Oh, yeah, that's right. But it was, it was a good size pig. Yeah, the guy Rob Brisley, public affairs officer said the right steps

had to be taken to confiscate and destroy the item and then the sentence stop. But I imagine he said, with our mouths. Right. With extreme vengeance. So anyway, I mean, that's just one example. Yeah, we should, we should probably say exactly what we're talking about for those people

who haven't been to an international airport in the United States. But there is a group of working dogs that are exclusively beagles, hence the name the Beagle Brigade, from what I understand. Although I did see reference that they do use labs sometimes, but I'm pretty sure it's almost exclusively beagles,

if not exclusively beagles. And these dogs have a job. They're actually federal agents with the USDA. Yeah. The Department of Agriculture. Not the FDA. No, or not the DEA either. But they're federal agents and they are,

their whole job is to sniff out agricultural products. And the whole point of all of this is that the US has a pretty extensive agriculture infrastructure, right? Yeah. And if something comes through, say that's a pest, right? Like a bug that eats, what do we grow here?

Cotton, cotton weevil, but from another country, right? So a non-native pest or a non-native plant or a diseased bat, it could wreak havoc, not just on our agriculture system, but if the wrong kind of thing comes through, like there's procedures in place for food to come in the United States. You're not supposed to carry it in your luggage

because it has to be inspected. It has to come from a trusted source. We have to know that it doesn't have something like hoof and mouth disease or Ebola or something like that, right? Yeah. I mean, it says in here in our own article that it's a $1 trillion industry,

our own agricultural product industry. Right. Export, export, eating it, producing it, and invasive species can be, it says about $136 billion in agricultural lost revenue. Is that annually? I believe so. Man, so I mean, that's a lot of economy at stake here,

so they take it very seriously. Right, so there's this group, so the USDA, the Department of Agriculture here in the US has a subgroup called AFIS, which is the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. And they're the ones who are tasked with basically creating this virtual border, this virtual barrier to stuff coming in the US

to protect agriculture in the US, right? Yeah, like the notorious Romanian cotton weevil. Right, exactly, the most insidious of all. And specifically at international airports, working in conjunction with the Customs Bureau, CPB, Customs and, no, CBP, right, Customs and Border Patrol, you've got these cute, adorable little beagles who are trained to sniff this stuff out

from people who are trying to smuggle whole pigs into the country when they're not supposed to. God bless that lady. And I felt bad for her, you know? Yeah. I mean, I get it, sure, but, you know, the time and the money. There's no way she did not cry.

Oh, sure. When the agriculture inspector took her whole pig, she was going to feed to her family. What a waste of food. She worked so hard on that, Chuck. I know. That might have been like her favorite family pig that she was waiting.

Right, it was Babe. Babe gave his life. So you want to talk a little bit about the history here because it did not, agricultural, agriculture dogs or agricultural detection did not start in the US. It actually started in Mexico. Yeah. I guess was probably the early 70s.

I did, I could not find when it started, but yeah, we know it's definitely prior to the 70s because based on this, I guess it was a USDA training manual that was referencing it. It picks up then in the late 70s that the USDA started this. Yeah. And then up until 1983, we used big dogs, you know,

like typically, and I think we covered this in a lot of the other like drug sniffers like German Shepherds and labs are certainly good, but they are, labs aren't so intimidating, but German Shepherds can be, even though I love them, I grew up with them. Sure. A lot of people, the site of a German Shepherd

coming at them in an airport is a little scary. Yeah, I mean, and some people have Sinophobia, which is a fear of dogs specifically, and in which case, even the smallest dogs can scare you, but even people who don't have an actual phobia of dogs are going to be scared of certain breeds, and that definitely includes German Shepherds for sure. So it started in Mexico,

and then finally in 1984, the USDA started at LAX, which is probably a pretty good airport to pick for a pilot program. Yeah. Not an airplane pilot program, although I'm sure they had those. Yeah. Did you hear about the king of the Netherlands?

Uh-uh. They found out that he has been secretly undercover moonlighting as a KLM airline pilot for fun for like the last, like once a week, for like the last 20-something years. And has been flying? Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

He's been undercover flying not as the king of the Netherlands just trying to have a life of his own. I thought you meant like Leo DiCaprio didn't catch me if you can. He just pretended to be a pilot. Oh, no. Just to get babes and fake chicks. You're a king.

You can't be a pilot. Wow. So was he, did he come clean or was he outed? I guess he was outed. And he said from time to time somebody would recognize him but he'd just have them kidnapped. Yeah, kidnapped and killed. Rendered extraordinarily. Wow. That's pretty crazy.

Yeah. Well, good for him. Yeah. They should just let him fly, you know? I think so. They're gonna work it out? Probably. I hope so.

If not, that guy's one outlet has been taken away from him. Well, so his pilot program is maybe failing but the pilot program in 1984 at LAX worked great and they, this was a big deal at the time too. It was a big change from any kind of detection programs that they had at the time. I don't know why it took that long but his dogs are obviously well-known sniffers

to the tune of, I mean, compared to humans, how many millions of olfactory nerves the dogs have? I know it varies. So somewhere in the middle is the doxin. I didn't see the beagle specifically but supposedly beagles are about average as far as scenting goes, which is surprising to me but the doxin has 125 million olfactory receptors.

Amazing. And humans have 5 million on average. And I know the dogs, even the size of their nose can make a difference. So I was a little surprised they picked beagles but one of the big reasons is A, the Navy had used them previously to great success and B, like you said, they're little, they're cute.

So they're not gonna scare anyone at the airport and they're agile because they're small and they can jump around on a conveyor belt like nobody's business to find that Romanian cotton weevil. Right, sometimes they'll find just enough fruit that they'll make a little headdress out of it like Carmen Miranda. Yeah.

Nothing cuter than seeing a beagle in one of those. Well, the other cool thing about the dogs and their sniffing abilities is it's like, you can't disguise something. Like if you have, of course, I was about to say drugs again but if you have, let's say you wanna sneak in that cotton weevil and you think I'm gonna hide in in a can of coffee, actually that might be,

you might not be able to bring in coffee either now that I think about it. I was just trying to think of something with a strong odor. A bottle of perfume. Okay. The dog will be able to pick that out of that perfume. Right. Will be able to almost geo-locate it

because they don't get confused like we do. Yeah, so you know how like a dog can, when you watch a dog on a scent, it's just kind of like sniffing back and forth in the air as it moves. Oh yeah. So what it's doing is it's basically the same thing with our vision, right?

The information is getting from one nostril and the other nostril, it's bringing this putting together to create basically like a 3D map of where that smell is coming from, just like the information from one eye compared to the information coming into our other eye gives us an idea of like depth, right?

Or perspective, that kind of thing. Right. So it's basically the same thing but with their olfactory sense. And put on top of that is the fact that they can distinguish scents. Like this article, this USDA manual said, when you walk into a kitchen and you smell chili,

you smell chili, right? Chili's cooking, put it all together, it's chili. That's what you smell is the sum of all the parts. Yeah, you know, if you're good, you might be able to pick out a thing or two. Maybe, like, you know. Like cumin. I detect, yeah, some cumin.

But a dog will walk in there and smell every single one of the ingredients separately. Right. Which is why you can't just take something and try to overpower the smell of it with something else. The dog will smell the thing that you're using to try to overpower it with. But it'll also smell the other scent.

Apparently they can smell, this thing says, they can smell table salt in a dilution of one part to 10 million parts. That's amazing. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. That's also why, if you've ever taken your dog to a new, like a new, really new environment

that they've never been to, like the beach, for instance. When I took, I think a couple of years ago, we did a beach vacation and took our dogs and they were going crazy. Like they were walking down to the beach and it was just nose in the air because, you know, there's always a good breeze or usually a good breeze on the beach.

And I can imagine they were just, they were smelling these just hundreds and hundreds of things that they'd never smelled before. Yeah. And it's pretty neat to see and you kind of wonder what's going on in that luck cat of theirs, you know? Mm-hmm.

Or in my case, one luck cat and one smart one. I've seen before that when a dog is sniffing at a tree, what you're watching them do is sniff, you know, the tree itself, but also every single insect in that tree, every bird in that tree, everything that's in that tree right then, that dog is smelling that. Yeah. And I think it definitely varies because obviously some dogs are better,

like hunting dogs and such. And my new dog, Nico, we think may be part plot hound. What's that? Just like a, you know, a hound. Okay. I mean, you can look up plot hound and it looks like my dog. Okay, all right.

But like a mix of a plot hound, but I think that they're like really good scent dogs too because she more so than other dogs I've had is really driven by her nose. And when he let her out, she's got her nose to the ground like for quite a while. I was reading today about scent tracking and apparently it's something like some people

like to do agility stuff with their dog or other people do like obedience, like competitions and stuff and then other people. And apparently this also is a really good thing to do if you found your dog is like no good at obedience. Right. They might actually love scent tracking because unlike the obedience stuff or the agility stuff,

when you're scent tracking, the dog is totally in charge. Like you're basically following the dog, but you're doing it together, especially during training as well. Well, you know, they'd say if your dog has behavioral problems and a lot of times that means they have a job that they're not being,

they're not allowed to do. Oh yeah, that makes sense. You know, like if you have a herding dog that doesn't have a herd, then that might be a big pain in your butt until you can find a way to kind of let them, I don't know, they can not necessarily part time as a herder,

but do something that acts as a herder, you know. Might as well make some money off of it. You want to take a little break? All right, we're gonna take a break and get back to the pickles right after this. Stuff you should know. On the podcast, pay dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck, so we're back. So we were talking basically about dogs in general, but since 1984, the USDA has been training Beagles for its Beagle Brigade, right? Which is this frontline covering America's agricultural

infrastructure. That is correct. So, I was very heartened to learn from researching this that the Beagle Brigade specifically with the USDA, all of them come from shelters. They're all shelter animals. Yeah, and you know what, it kind of makes sense. At first I just thought it was out of the kindness

of their heart that they wouldn't like support the dog buying industry. But they, a lot of times just get problem dogs, these Beagles that are so like, you know, up in the business in your pantry or your refrigerator or sniffing out your shoes so they can chew them up. People will, you know, well, I have opinions of this, but people will turn that dog back in or whatever

to be adopted, hopefully, from a no-kill shelter. Right, so then that's a big point that this USDA spokesperson makes in the House of Works article is like a lot of people are saying, I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. You guys are using these dogs as tools, basically. Yeah. And I don't know, I don't think dogs should be used that way.

And the USDA's response is, well, a lot of these dogs would basically be put down if it weren't for us. You know, they would be euthanized because they can't, they're too hyper to live with a family. But that's exactly the kind of temperament we need for what we're having them do. So actually, it's win-win for everybody. Well, yeah, and as much as I love my dogs laying around

in bed with me, a happy dog, it's a dog that's working and exercising, and then at the end of the night, they get to relax. But, you know, it's easy to, and we cover some of this in seeing eye dogs and stuff, it's easy to be like, oh man, that dog doesn't get to have fun all day. And that's just not true at all. These dogs have a purpose, and they're good at what they do.

So don't think of it as like using this dog as a tool in a bad way, you know? Right, and then on the other end of it, if the dog is brought into the program and they find out that the dog doesn't have what it takes, maybe it doesn't work very well amidst chaos that like an airport always has, or perhaps the dog just seems unhappy, they say.

If the dog seems unhappy, they'll retire it early. At any rate, they have apparently a 100% record of adopting out their beagles, and there's a wait list right now to adopt these beagles that have worked for several years, or didn't work, didn't make it, but entered into the program, they don't return them to shelters, they don't euthanize them,

they adopt them out, and apparently the USDA has a 100% adoption record on that, which is pretty outstanding. Yeah, and as with a lot of service dogs, their handler is given first right of refusal for adoption. Right. And I do a lot of times, they do so, you know? Yeah, I would guess so too,

because apparently when the dog and the handler are paired up together as a team, they stay a team for the dog's whole career. It's like Riggs and Murtaugh. Right, or Turner and Hooch. Actually, it's not like Riggs and Murtaugh, because they were paired at the very end of Danny Glover's career, so that was a bad analogy.

Oh, that's right, that's true. Because he's too old for that crap. He is. That was a big line. Yeah, that was a great line. Isn't that a TV show now? I don't think it is anymore. Jerry's nodding, but that probably means you're both right.

Short lived. I think so. I haven't seen any ads for it lately. What a dumb idea. Like, hey, let's dust this thing off from 25 years ago. They do that with everything. Like Twin Peaks even. It's like, how come on?

How are you gonna pick that back up? Let's just stop. Well, I don't mind that, because that's just more greatness from David Lynch. Is it any good? I've heard not necessarily. I think it's great. I mean, I'm a fan of anything David Lynch does.

It doesn't. Sure. I didn't expect it to be exactly what Twin Peaks was. It just feels like a new TV show from David Lynch to me. Oh, gotcha. Really? Okay. You know, I could be down with that.

All right, so let's get into this. You mentioned handlers. We've been dancing around this the whole time. You mentioned handlers. And this, like we said earlier, this takes place at a place called the National Detector Dog Training Center, the NDDTC, right here in lovely Noonan, Georgia,

which is at West. I think it's Southwest. Southwest? Like just down 85 after it splits off as 75, 85. My knowledge of my own home state is pretty poor. If I haven't camped there, and it's outside of Atlanta, I probably don't know exactly where it is.

I'm pretty sure I'm right. Okay, Southwest then. Let's go with that. Okay. And they start training, like with most service dogs, they do that initial testing to just sort of see, are they healthy? Do they have the right temperament?

How's their behavior? And that initial screening is where the first lot gets weeded out. And one of the biggest parts of that initial weeding out is they have to have a high food drive. And that's not, that doesn't mean how hungry are they? That means your dog has just been fed. This little beagle is just eaten,

but they still have a high desire to get to where the food is. It's like bacon, bacon, bacon. Basically, that's what you're looking for. Yeah. And you make a lot of noise and you have crowds around and you just, you're testing their focus. And this is all just the, like I said,

the initial screening to say, all right, little Henry, the beagle here has what it takes. Right. We think. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's just the start. And they also learn to differentiate. That's the big one.

That's the next big step, right? So I think there's like a one or two week, like evaluation process. They also like give the dog a full like veterinarian inspection. I believe they spay and or neuter. Sure. I guess not and or,

specifically not and or in that case. Or they, they, they spay or neuter the dog. A lot of times the dogs come in and not very good shape because they're shelter dogs. Yeah. They probably weren't taken very good care of early in their life.

So they, they may need some sort of treatment or checkups or whatever. But then after that happens, the training actually starts and the dogs are trained to scent. I guess starting out from what I saw, five basic restricted scents. Yeah.

This, that didn't expect these. Would you know it's a, it's rando. No, is it? No, no, it's random. Oh, I thought they, they were, I thought there were five scents. No, there are. And I'm saying that's a pretty random assemblage.

Oh, okay. I got you. Man, you'd think after nine years together. But I mean, if you were to have picked five scents, I probably would have definitely picked beef, pork and citrus. Those make sense. I guess I would have picked like monkey bat

and probably pig too, yeah. But I mean, those are in there. So you, well, the monkey and the bat aren't, but beef, pork, citrus, mango. Yeah, that's where you threw me. What was the other one? Apple. Apple.

What's wrong with apple? I didn't even know they grew apples outside of the United States. Who's trying to smuggle an apple into the US? I don't know. We got the best ones here, buddy. Just leave them at home. Yeah, I would love to know why

those are the five basic scents. If someone has more information that, because I could not find out. I could not either. There's a real dearth of information on this stuff. I even emailed the Customs and Border Protection today because I could not, for the life of me, find the name of that first beagle

that started out at LAX in 1984. Cannot find it anywhere. Well, you're on a list now, buddy. I'm starting to suspect that somebody forgot to write it down. So no one knows. You're being tracked now. Probably.

Oh, yeah, I've been looking up restricted items, agriculture, invasive species, stuff like that. I'm sure I'm on a list. All right, so they teach them those. Well, this is toward the end is when they know those five basic scents. At first, they're just basically teaching them how to sniff through bags and suitcases and boxes

and making sure they'll throw a goat's head in a suitcase. And send it through in noon and you laugh. But one of them found a goat head not too long ago. I know. So it happens. And they just make sure they can do that. And they eventually, and then, of course, they have to differentiate.

Like, there's a lot of things that are scented like those things that are just fine, like an orange perfume. Right, well, that's another. That's got to be kind of tough to learn for a dog, too, is the difference between orange scented stuff or things that are made with, like, say, orange essence. Like a candy or a lip balm or something like that.

And an actual orange. Because the lip balm, no problem. Actual orange, you got a problem. That's right. And once they've done this, this is about a few months, probably, 10 to 13 weeks. And this is, and they're being trained in regular, like how to paw at stuff and alert and sitting responses.

Like, all of this is one big learning period. And the handler is getting trained, as well, obviously. Right. But at the end of this is when they finally do graduate to those five basic scents. And I guess, see, what I don't get it from the basic scents is, is it from those scents that they can smell anything? No, that's crazy.

That's what I thought, too, that's what it implies. Like, if you put together apple and pig and mango, you've got, like, bat. You have a luau. That's not the case. Like, each thing has its own scent. I don't know if those are, like, the most commonly smuggled ones, possibly.

Maybe. So those are the ones they need to start out with. Maybe they're the easiest ones. I don't know. But yeah, if you put those things together, especially if a dog smells in layers, right, and differentiates between scents, it's not going to smell the combined scent of those things.

It's going to smell each thing. So I'm not sure why those are the five basic ones. Can't find out. Yeah. Well, hopefully, we don't know. This one was a stone wall. I mean, like, we're professional researchers here. And, like, we really ran into a wall.

Yeah. Who would have known that the Beagle Brigade is what would throw us? It would break us. So they've learned all these scents. They've learned how to alert. They're getting treats. They're getting positive reinforcement along the way.

Yeah. That's a big one, too. The entire training is strictly positive reinforcement. Yeah. They don't beat these dogs down if they're not smelling correctly. They have, like, they spend 10 grand a month on newspapers to roll up, teach these dogs lessons. Puppy Pounder.

So once they've gone through all of that, everyone knows I'm joking, right? Yeah. And if you're new to the podcast and don't just don't even bother emailing. Yeah. We're great animal lovers here. So once they've gone through this whole training process,

they finally graduate. They get their little diploma, their little hat, and their little robe, and they graduate from noon and they get to move to the big city with their handler. Atlanta. Or anywhere, any international airport. But Atlanta certainly has a large one. For sure.

And so once they get to their home base airport that they're going to be working at, they're still evaluated and trained for another sometimes 10 to 13 weeks. Yeah, training is kind of ongoing from what I saw, too. Like the whole career, you know? Yeah. There's not like the, OK, stop learning, dog.

Yeah. You know too much. But I think the initial training period, their basic training still can go on for another 10 to 13 weeks after they get to the airport. And even once they get to the airport, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to stay in the program.

Again, once they're finally introduced to the chaos of an international airport, that dog might just be like, this is not for me. Send me back to noon. Yeah. You know? I mean, you can try and duplicate that chaos in noon in. But good luck.

You just can't. I mean, even you just can't. There's nothing like a busy airport. You can't recreate that. Yeah. So some dogs are fine with it. Some dogs are not. But again, one of the main reasons why they're

choosing Beagles is because it is so chaotic. And these dogs are, their whole thing is, they're not there at like a mail processing facility. They're not there at like a border crossing. They're there at a busy airport. And they're meant to be able to kind of weave in and out of the crowd while also being non-threatening and also being lovable, too.

Like that's not by accident that they chose these incredibly adorable dogs. The USDA says that the Beagle Brigade is basically like a walking, lovable advertisement for what they're trying to do, which is protect agriculture here in the US. Yeah. They have a little vest that says Beagle Brigade.

Yeah. And everyone ooze and oze, and some people, if you're not, this is probably how they do it, if you're not actively oozing and eyeing and you're standing there sweating heavily, then the dog keys in on you. So that'd be a big trouble. And I don't know if you said it or not.

If you did, I didn't catch it. But the dogs are trained to walk up, to locate a contraband item, and sit as a bag. Yeah, yeah. I thought they attacked the person first. It's called a passive indicating. Yeah. But rather than, I saw in this article

it says they pawed it. Everywhere else, I saw that they just sit and kind of look at the person, like, shame on you. Exactly. It's a very passive aggressive way to out somebody for a goat's head in their two caves. Right. Should we take a break?

Oh, yeah, man, you read my mind. All right, we're going to do that, and we're going to finish up here with a Beagle Brigade. Suffice should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker

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All right. So what happens at the end of a long day, Josh? The dog. Most beagles enjoy a good pipe, maybe a scotch, in an easy chair. Perhaps a cigar. Sure. They tend to watch CNN, although if you watch Fox News,

and they fall asleep a little drunk. That's what they do every night. It's their routine, and that's what beagles like. Oh, no, that's our routine at our clubhouse, where we live. I know. Weirdly, and this kind of surprised me. I guess it's not weird. Now that I've seen the explanation.

But I was surprised to learn that they're kenneled. I guess I thought they lived with their handler. Yeah, because canine police dogs live with their handler. Yeah. I thought it was weird, too. But they're kenneled. They have a facility near the airport. Some people have asked, can I just keep this dog at night,

and then take them to work every morning? And they say, no. They said, this is actually best for everyone. They need the rest. I imagine they have a good play together. I doubt if they just drive them straight there and put them in the crate. There's probably a little social scene going on.

I hope so. Yeah. I hope they don't get scolded for making eye contact with the other working dogs they live with. No, they put in their eight hours. They come home. They probably play a bit, and then they're kenneled overnight. And they said that they need this rest time in order

to do their job successfully. And like I said, a happy dog is a dog that feels good about its work. And you said, Chuck, some people ask if they can take them home. Sure. You should specify, that's not the agent asking. Oh, yes.

Like, people at the airport. I know. Like, can I just take them home for the night, and you guys can come get them tomorrow? Or I'll even bring them back. I don't only live like 45 minutes away. Yeah, sure. Just give me your cell phone number.

That sounds great. So it does make sense that, yeah, they are left to just kind of rest. And I'm sure that they actually live at the airport, which is funny. It's like that movie Terminal with Tom Hanks. It says in nearby facility. You think it's actually there?

I'm sure. Yeah. Did you know that that movie Terminal with Tom Hanks is based on a real life thing? Yeah. And the guy was like living there for a decade or something like that, and Charles Degall? Yeah.

Did you see that movie? No. I just read the article of movies based on. Yeah, it's not very good, unfortunately. I got that impression. Yeah, it was a bummer. Oh, really? It doesn't end well?

Well, no, it was just a bummer that it wasn't good, because it was like Spielberg and Tom Hanks, and I think my hopes were high. Yeah. But yeah, I didn't care for it. No such luck, Charles. So the Beagle Brigade, it's a very closely guarded secret, just how many Beagles are brigading.

So they can say, though, that there are 116 CBP agricultural canine teams with the dogs and the handlers, and that every international airport in the country has a Beagle Brigade there doing their job. So they can tell you a lot. Yeah, I mean, you want to tell some stories here? Yes, so there was this one dog called Murray. Murray.

Murray was at a shelter in North Georgia, and apparently some dummies decided they wanted a hunting dog and didn't want to spend any money, but they wanted a dock tail and ears and everything, so they tried it themselves. And it didn't go very well for poor Murray, so they dropped him off at a shelter, probably knowing the state.

They probably dropped him off on a dirt road, and somebody else found him and took him to a shelter. And Murray was rescued by a group called Alcovee Pet Rescue. And I guess Alcovee has a direct pipeline to the Beagle Brigade handlers down in Newton, said, hey, we think we got one for you. This guy is so food-driven, it's crazy. He's got a lot of love.

He just needs a little bit of attention. He's missing part of his ear, but we can get past that. And at age two or three, he became an agent for the USDA at Atlanta-Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. That's great. The only way that story could have ended better is if those original people had part of their ear cut off. Yeah.

By a dog. Yeah. What about Jasper? So Jasper, he worked at JFK, I think. Yeah, this was late last year, Jasper retired after an eight-year career. And during this career, Jasper seized over 17,000 items. The goat's head was Jasper, like I mentioned.

Yeah, whale meat. Yeah, whale meat, rhinoceros skin. Cooked bat. Really? What else? Anything else crazy like that? No, not that I saw. And a lot of Romanian cotton weevils.

Right. And his handler, Amanda, Tipple, or Triple, is it Tipple or Triple? Triple. She said that she was interviewed with Modern Farmer Magazine, which I didn't realize existed until last week. And now you have a subscription. Yeah, they did an interview with her.

And she was saying that he could very easily work longer, but that the mandatory age of retirement is eight, because they want the dogs to have some years of just chilling out, not having to work. And that she's going to take him home. She's adopting him, which he did adopt him. I think the article was from last year, and he was on the verge of retirement

when they interviewed him. But he went, and apparently this is fairly normal, went from something like 15 to 30 hits, 20 to 30 hits a day. Wow. But had declined to about 10 to 15. Yeah, everybody was very disappointed in him. Well, I mean, that's a good retirement age. If they're eight, like barring some very sad health

concern, a dog that size can live to be 13, 14 years old. Right, sure. Best of many years ahead of them, hopefully. Yeah. In retirement. Yeah, and once she takes him home, she gets another dog that she's going to partner with. So I wonder how that'll go over.

Will Jasper be like, I know where you've been today, and I just want to tell you again, I'm not happy with this? Well, I bet Jasper and all retired dogs have to deal with that transition. Yeah, I imagine there's something the handlers have to do with them on a daily basis. Probably a lot of long walks. I imagine the dog isn't just like, all right,

and now I'm going to rest. Right. Like they're used to that activity. Well, yeah, I was wondering that as well. I wondered too, if they get them when they're young, so they're super hyper, and then maybe by the time they're eight, they've mellowed a little bit. Sure.

At least comparatively speaking. Yeah, yeah. I think a mellow beagle is still pretty hyper compared to a normal dog. Yeah, I've never been around beagles, actually. Oh, they'll pull. Yeah. Yeah, and they bathe and everything.

They're super cute, but they can be rambunctious for sure. Yeah, I've never known anyone with a beagle. So I don't even know if I've ever touched a beagle. Now that I think about it. No, but if you've been touched by a beagle, you'll never forget it, Chuck. A couple of stats for you. Last year alone in 2016, the brigade

inspected 23 million passengers, 741,000 pieces of freight, and they alerted total in the United States to more than 1.77 million seizures of illegal materials. That's a lot. That's about what, like, 7%, 8% of people bringing stuff in that have been caught. Yeah, and I saw also that there's an even more specialized group of dogs that are typically

Jack Russell Terriers that work on Guam to root out specifically brown tree snakes. Yeah, that's crazy. Which are an invasive species that got introduced to Guam and have killed off like a lot of indigenous bird species. And they're basically trying to protect Hawaii as much as they can.

I didn't know Hawaii didn't have snakes until this article. Yeah, it's like Ireland over there. Yeah, I mean, it made sense, of course. But I just figured, I mean, there's all kinds of invasive species, so I just thought that I just figured snakes would be one of them. Yeah, no, Hawaii takes their agriculture defense very seriously. Yeah, it's a felony.

The snake thing is. Yeah, well, they'll just beat you up before they even take you to jail if they catch you. Well, I read an article because I was like, what? Is that real? And which is, I guess, of great comfort to back country exploring and explorers if you're scared of snakes.

But I read an article and there were a couple of them found last year that people had managed to sneak in. And one was a boa constrictor that was dead in the road, like five feet long. And the guy saw it and said, like, there's a snake. And everyone in the car was like, there are no snakes in Hawaii. They're like, no, that's a snake.

He's like, oh, I'm just a total idiot, I guess. I'm sure there are legs under there, just a big lizard. I hate you guys. Yeah, that was news to me, so very interesting. Supposedly the Everglades down in Florida have a huge problem with Burmese pythons and a couple of different kinds of pythons that in all of them were pets.

And now they're just taking over and getting to be 20 feet long or just crazy, eating wild boars and things like that. Because idiots get them and then they grow and they say, this snake is too big and they just put it out in the swamp. I just wanted a puppy snake. So here's a good example too. It's easy to, like the goat head and the cooked pig

gets a lot of attention. But usually this stuff is, it's not nefarious. It's like this one lady in February of this year, actually, there was a big old named Gadget that sees, and this is just one seizure from one person, a potted tamarin plant, two live trees, 42 packages of seeds, 20 pieces of palm tree plantings, chicory seed, rice, millet, and fresh garlic.

And a note from God. I mean, that's a lot of stuff, but this is what happens. Like someone goes to another country and they want to bring back seeds to plant something. It's not like they're awful people, but they can innocently wreak havoc on agriculture here by doing so, you know? Right.

So the process from what I gather is that you declare anything you have on you. And then if they can let you bring it through, then they'll let you bring it through. But if not, they'll just take it and be like, sorry, we got to take this. Then they'll shoot it in front of you. If you don't declare it and they catch you with it,

thanks to the Beagle Brigade, you can be fined up to something like $1,000 for your first offense. And if it's clear you're like a straight-up smuggler, you will probably go to jail. Well, this person did declare that had all that stuff, chocolate and an apple. So yes, she thought maybe if I declare something, I won't be a suspicious.

I don't know. Right. But I mean, if you're a CBP agent and you're looking at that and you have the discretion of whether to arrest that person or not, you may very well be like, you know, you're definitely trying to smuggle this stuff. So I'm going to make an example out of you, lady. Yeah.

And then Gadget's just sitting there, just like, what have I done? Yeah, and the lady, as they're hauling her off to jail, she's like, I would have gotten away with it if I hadn't been for you meddling dogs. You got anything else? I do. I have one more thing. I ran across this article, I think it was on Quartz.

And it said, like, bush meat, illegal bush meat could be the cause of the next big global pandemic. Oh, wow. There's apparently a major market for bush meat, which is any wild animal meat. And most people think of it as like monkey or bat or something like that. But it also is like elk or caribou.

Any illegal meat that's basically just being smuggled around, there's huge markets for it in New York, in London, in mainland Europe. And people just smuggle it in. And a lot of them make it through. And these things just get sold behind the counter at butcher shops in some cities. And all it's going to take is one of those things

to have Ebola and maybe a mutant strain that is transmitted a little more easily than Ebola light or whatever we have now. And you got a pandemic on your hands. And we can say, thanks a lot. I hope you really enjoyed that monkey leg that killed off three quarters of the population of humanity. Chris, just bush meat, those two words, I don't like it.

I know. I know that's pretty rough. So I guess you're done then too, huh? I'm done, sir. OK, well, if you guys want to know more about bush meat or the Beagle Brigade or anything like that, type those words in the search bar at housestuffworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to call this one. I'm sad yet happy email. Hey, guys, my name is Sam. I wanted to send you an email thanking you for your show. The podcast is actually a rediscovery for me. My dad used to play it back in 2009 when we would drive up to the mountain to go skiing. A very fond memories of laughing and nerding out

with my dad and brothers after a great day on the slopes. Can't believe you guys are still going strong after eight plus years. There is a little more to my rediscovery of your show, though, that I wanted to share. It's been four and a half years since one of my brothers, who is an amazing skier, died tragically to suicide. Since I was in college at the time, I didn't have enough time to properly grieve.

Recently, I've been mulling through many painful memories that I ignored in those first three years. However, your show unexpectedly brought back really happy ones. It has reminded me of the fun adventure in learning our family enjoyed while listening to your show when we were skiing. I remember laughing hysterically with my family at your jokes, rolling their eyes when my brothers and dad

would try to comment on your show to sound smart. Because it was so creepy, one of your favorite episodes of ours was the one on cannibalism. Being a high schooler at the time, I also really liked the show on flirting, so I thought I could put it into practice. Needless to say, it didn't really work. You know what?

This month, I went home for a week to visit my parents, and I went skiing with my mom and dad. For the first time since my brother died, it was very painful, but also unimaginably special. When my family and I are on the mountain, I feel like I can encounter my brother as he was when he was healthy and full of life. I could picture him diving down a slope that was way too steep

with the most enormous grin on his eager face. All in all, it was a great day, so I just want to say thank you for the hard work and providing interesting topics to fill my time, making me laugh, but also inadvertently helping me cherish a special time in my life. Man, that was heavy. That is from Sam, and she sends hugs.

Sam, that is fantastic. Very nice. Thank you very much for letting us know. We appreciate that, and our best to your whole family. Absolutely. If you want to get in touch with us like Sam did, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can hang out with me at JoshOmClark on Twitter.

You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can also see us at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcasts.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, hey dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass

on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.