First he told police they were normal hen eggs which he had bought from Waitrose. I suppose if I was ever going to pretend to have picked up seventy grand's worth of rare eggs from a supermarket, Waitrose is the one I would choose too. But then again that's exactly the the kind of detail I would overlook, causing my defence to come tumbling down around my ankles. It's probably just as well I'm not a master criminal.
(Some reports are suggesting that one of the eggs really was a hen egg, which Lendrum had coloured in so it looked like the others. This was meant to act as some kind of elaborate decoy, apparently. I don't think it worked.)
Next he claimed he had taped the eggs to his body because he had a bad back, and a physiotherapist had told him that strapping something fragile to his stomach would encourage the muscles to tense up. I am no medical expert, but this sounds a bit dodgy to me. Besides, there are plenty of things which are cheaper, more fragile and less likely, when crushed, to explode in a mass of oozing yolk than peregrine falcon eggs are. Snow globes. Fortune cookies. Chinese lanterns. The possibilities are endless, and a lot less messy.
Something else which would probably make the average person's stomach muscles tense up, at least a bit, is finding yourself at the centre of an investigation being conducted by the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what happened next. The CTU got involved after John Struczynski*, a cleaner at Birmingham Airport, noticed Ledrum spending an unusual length of time in the VIP lounge shower, and raised the alarm. Mr Struczynski (who in my head looks exactly like Bennedict Cumberbatch) became suspicious when he noticed a) the shower stall was still dry and b) there were some empty egg cartons in the nearby bins. He called CTU, they investigated Mr Ledrum, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The good news is that 11 out of 14 of the eggs were incubated succesfully, by a bird breeder called Mr Featherstone. That's right, Featherstone. Sometimes the jokes just write themselves. Some have already hatched.
Until Mr Featherstone could collect the eggs, CTU officers kept them warm by storing them on top of their computers. A CTU spokesman said "This isn't part of our normal business but we are pleased with outcome." I always wondered why, in eight series of 24, Jack Bauer didn't get a single animal smuggling storyline. (I can see it now: I promise I will return you to your natural habitat, if it's the last thing I do. I give you MY WORD.) Now I know.
That's not all from the world of international animal trafficking. The Sky News website helpfuly displays similar stories at the bottom of their news articles, and you'd be surprised how often people try and do things like this. Similar stories to today's include: Wriggling snakes strapped to smuggler (good example of the power of adjectives; take out the 'wriggling' and it's hardly worth a mention), Frozen sharks stuffed with cocaine and my favourite, Man held over birds in his trousers.
Just quickly: the snake man was caught out because he also had a tarantula in his bag, which was discovered during a routine customs check. "Customs officers quickly realised the man was smuggling animals because his whole body was in constant motion." says Sky News. One of the customs officers chipped in: "He told us he was crazy about reptiles".
Meanwhile, here is a photo of the man with birds in his pants:
He is not wearing the pants here. He was caught because an inspector noticed bird droppings and feathers on his socks, and bird tails poking out of his trousers.
*I had to read 4 different versions of the story, plus a press release, to find out his name even though he is clearly the hero of the piece. Big up John Struczynski, I say.
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