The Spy Who Did Not Seem To Care For Me Very Much

A guy I knew (briefly, mercifully) had been in the Air Force, assigned to guard an important missile site in one of the Dakotas: North, or South, or Fanning. I can't remember much about him, except that he was a real Barney Fife kind of guy, loved uniforms and rules and marching around.

He told me one time that while making his rounds about the base, he saw a dog that had somehow "penetrated perimeter security" (service talk for "jumped the fence") but when this guy corralled the pooch and interrogated him (I swear that's how he put it) the dog clammed up and would not bark, and a search of his collar yielded nothing, so he was "taken into custody" for "disposition to be determined at a future date," which I hoped was service talk for "someone with a little sense will take Poochie to the fence and send him home," for crying out loud.

Meanwhile, back in this year, police in India were holding a "suspected Chinese spy pigeon" for eight months, only to find out that the bird was an open-water racing bird from Taiwan. It had escaped Taiwan and gotten to India by air (hitchhiking is forbidden there) and was captured near a port in Mumbai (so maybe it chartered a boat?) When apprehended, the bird had two rings tied to its legs, so police naturally suspected espionage and sent the pigeon to Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals. 

There is a precedent here from 2016, when another pigeon (let's assume it wasn't the same one!) was arrested after being found with a note that threatened Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But upon asking the bird to write his side of the story, police saw that he, indeed, could not write, which was a strong piece of evidence in the defense claim that he could not have written the note.