After noticing a package from Vietnam declared as chocolate spongecake didn’t quite smell like chocolate spongecake, customs officials in the German city of Cologne last month opened it up and found that their suspicions had been justified since some asshole had stuffed over 1,500 baby tarantulas in plastic vials inside the cakes and shipped it to Germany, the Associated Press reports.
“My colleagues at the airport are regularly surprised by the contents of prohibited packages from all over the world, but the fact that they found around 1,500 small plastic containers containing young tarantulas in this package left even the most experienced among them speechless,” Cologne customs office spokesman Jens Ahland said in a statement Monday. The survivors were given to a local expert for care and the intended recipient – who per usual with the German justice system was not named publicly – is facing customs violation and import tax evasion charges.