If it wasn’t already blatantly obvious that tensions are running particularly high in Egypt at the moment then news out of the country over the weekend would seem to confirm it. A man who noticed a swan, with an electronic device around its neck was so concerned that it was being used to spy on the area that he apprehended the bird and took it to a local police station.
Police officials in the province of Qena, which is some 400 km’s south of the Egyptian capital of Cairo, said an unnamed man bought in the feathery infiltrator on Saturday and gave it over to the police to investigate.
Mohammad Kamal, a spokesperson for Qena police, said that the man was convinced that the bird was being used to gather information on the region via a small, electronic device attached to its neck. Police confirmed that while they took the man’s claims seriously it became quickly obvious that the device was nothing more than a wildlife tracker which posed ‘no threat to national security.’
With so much turmoil going on in Egypt of late, many people in the country are on high alert and are suspicious of anything ‘foreign’.
To make matters worse for would-be feathery 007s, the capture of a pigeon carrying sensitive documents on microfilm earlier in the year has made birds a prime target for anti-espionage authorities.
Image: Getty
