NO DRUG-SNIFFING COWS HERE, POLICE SAY

Drug-Sniffing Cows Are Not Guarding The Fields Along The Canada-U.S.
Border.

But that's about all police authorities would say about 88 pounds of
cocaine found in a knapsack near Columbia Valley two weeks ago.

"That's a cute story," RCMP Const. Alex Borden said about the
drug-sniffing cow angle. But that's not the way the cocaine was discovered.

However, he wouldn't say how exactly the Integrated Border Enforcement
Team was tipped to such a large cache of the illegal and expensive
nose candy abandoned in a farmer's field.

"When we became aware of it, our members attended down there and
observed this item," he says, adding maybe a call to the U.S. border
patrol might elicit more information.

Mark Rech, resident agent in Blaine, confirms a U.S. citizen found the
cocaine, and, yes, cows might have been involved. But not the
drug-sniffing kind.

Farmers "frequently" report strange lights flashing in their fields as
drug traffickers make their way in the dark, he says, the southbound
with B.C. bud (marijuana) and the northbound with cocaine.

But why anyone would leave 88 pounds of it lying in a field, for over
a month judging by the condition of the knapsack, is a mystery.

"Maybe someone got awful spooked, and they didn't want to come back
for it," Mr. Rech says, or maybe they feared the police would be watching.

The cocaine will soon be destroyed, he adds, "unless somebody wants to
talk to law enforcement about it. Maybe somebody on your side of the
border."