Snakes on a train!

A friend of mine once claimed you weren’t really a Chilango until you’d carried live animals on public transportation. I’m not talking about out in the country. “Chicken buses” being pretty much a thing of the past, about my only experience with livestock on buses have been as freight.  I couldn’t figure out the noise under my seat on a second-class bus in Tlaxcala, til we stopped at a crossroads to let a lady out who had stored a litter of piglets in the baggage compartment. 

In la Capital, I’ve seen a few Chihuahuas or other small dogs stuffed in people’s pockets (or peeking out of backpacks) and heard a few boxes squawk now and again.  I once carried a very pissed off kitten cross town in a backpack… who let everyone on the bus know exactly how he felt about the indignity of the situation… loudly (he survived, and grew up to be a very, very big cat). 

I lost it one afternoon on a Nauculpan bus, when I was having an already strange day (I was only in Nauculpan because I’d taken the wrong bus to begin with) and ended up on the back seat wedged between a guy with a ventroloquist’s dummy (who kept making salacious comments ) and a guy with a box of chicks… who escaped.  I’m afraid the cackling gringo made everyone else a tad uncomfortable.

I’m not sure how I would have reacted to Sr. Sanchez’ companion.  I’m guessing the real snakes are the other two guys…

(my translation, from an article by Héctor Molina in El Gráfico, 16-marzo-2007)

A passenger with a snake and two security guards who robbed a packet of Metro tickets were detained yesterday on Metro Line 1.

Édgar Sánchez, 28, was caught traveling between Cuauhtémoc and Insurgentes stations with a snake wrapped around in his arm.

The snake, a python, was about 60 cm (2 feet) long, accorting to reports from Sistema de Transporte Colectivo.

The only animals permitted on the Metro are guide dogs for the blind.

Also on line 1, employees of a courier service were detained after robbing a thousand Metro tickets.

The theft occurred at an Insurgentes station ticket booth. The two were picking up cash receipts, and took the package of tickets.

After being detained, the two, Luis Ángel Castro Gorgonio, 23, and his buddy, Raúl Robles Martínez. Were taken to Public Ministry Station house #50.

Metro security personnel said that the tickets were found hidden in Castro Gorgonio’s clothing.

(By the way, Luis Ángel and Raúl are probably two of the stupider crooks I’ve read about in a while.  Metro tickets are still only 2 pesos a pop… so they stole 2000 pesos worth of tickets, which they’d have to unload at a discount, say a peso per– if they were lucky to find anyone willing to take hot tickets, and nobody’s gonna buy 1000 tickets at a time.  Our master criminals might have expected to earn, oh… about 50 bucks each.  DUMB and DUMBER).