Minutes away from crunch time at the world’s busiest airport, Tom Miller candidly admits he’s a bit concerned about his work partner’s professional attitude-or possible lack of it, given that his partner’s just back from vacation and may still be in the manana mode.
“He’s been off the job for eight days,” explains Miller, a U.S. Department of Agriculture Plant Protection and Quarantine officer headquartered at O’Hare’s bustling International Terminal. “He may go out there and do a lot, or he may just not be in the mood.”
USDA officer Vanessa Beldon, Miller’s co-worker, shakes her head sympathetically. She knows just what Miller is talking about. Her own partner, usually such a go-getter, had a rare bad day earlier in the week and spent most of his shift lying around the office. “Just one of those things,” Beldon says with a shrug.
Seemingly oblivious to the discussion about their professional demeanor, the two government employees in question enjoy their remaining few minutes of leisure before reporting for work in their snappy green USDA jackets. Miller’s partner scratches behind his ear and yawns. Beldon’s partner nips frenziedly at a yarn toy, then turns his attention to the peanuts in a visitor’s coat pocket.
Meet Sparky and Phyto, members of the USDA Beagle Brigade, America’s four-legged first line of defense against scores of insect pests and dozens of plant and animal diseases capable of crippling American agriculture.
Why beagles? “They’re hunting dogs, with a mild temperament, and they’re good around kids,” explains Miller, a USDA canine officer for the past six years. “We don’t want to intimidate people.”
Seven days a week, specially trained beagles are on duty at 18 airports around the country, sniffing out potential trouble in the form of meats, fruit and other prohibited plant and animal products carried into the U.S. by international travelers.
Schooled at Beagle Brigade centers operated by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in New York, Miami and San Francisco, the dogs spend 12 weeks learning to “respond passively”-sit down-when their highly sensitive sniffers encounter the scents of citrus fruit, mango, beef or pork in travelers’ luggage. Upon graduation, the dogs and their human partners are assigned to airports around the country.
For the beagles, the pay’s not great. Sparky and Phyto work for treats, earning a biscuit, a bit of beef jerky or an ersatz sausage snack every time they score a hit. On the other hand, the benefits are good: free room and board and all-expenses-paid visits to the vet, with dental checkups and teeth-cleaning sessions definitely included in the package. Observes Miller, “If they can’t chew those treats, what’s going to motivate them?”
According to the USDA, which launched the Beagle Brigade in 1984, dogs with one year’s experience sniff out prohibited products 80 percent of the time. Another year on the job, and their success rate soars to 90 percent. Sparky, 7, is the seasoned pro of O’Hare’s doggy duo. Phyto, christened Phyto Sanitary Certificate after a USDA document, has-like Beldon-been on the job since January. At 2 1/2, he’s still fine-tuning a few of his skills.
“When he smells meat, he tries to get into the bag and get at it sometimes,” Beldon explains. “We’re working on that.”
Keeping their palates clean
Because kitchen scents might confuse them, dogs do not live with their handlers. Earlier this morning, Beldon, 22, and Miller, 34, picked up their canine partners at their lodgings at the Chicago Police Kennel and chauffeured them to O’Hare, where the dogs donned bright green coats identifying them as members of “Agriculture’s Beagle Brigade/Protecting American Agriculture.” Sparky and Phyto’s job description also includes occasional demonstrations for school and civic groups in Chicago and suburbs (call Miller at 312-894-2920 for more information), but today it’s business as usual.
As the first international flights of the dogs’ workday begin to arrive, Beldon and Miller fasten leashes to their partners’ collars and head out of their office, also known as the Dog Room. In a typical day, Sparky and Phyto each will meet eight or nine incoming flights between noon and 7:15 p.m., sniffing as many as 175 passengers’ bags per planeload.
Miller pulls a flight schedule out of his back pocket. Sparky perks up noticeably.
“He thinks I’m pulling out a treat,” Miller explains as he and Sparky head for a baggage carousel where passengers arriving from Dusseldorf, Germany, many laden down with carry-on luggage, await their suitcases. Beldon and Phyto head for another carousel, where similarly burdened passengers await luggage checked through from London’s Heathrow Airport.
Despite Miller’s fears, Sparky immediately begins sniffing bags in a workmanlike fashion, occasionally standing on his hind legs to bring his nose in contact with a traveler’s backpack or bags stowed in a luggage cart.
“Considering that he’s been off for eight days, I can’t complain,” says Miller, who spent the past week at a USDA conference while Sparky hung out at the kennel. Dogs work only with their assigned trainers, so when Miller’s not working at O’Hare, Sparky gets a vacation.
Suddenly, Sparky sits down beside a luggage cart holding a large tote bag belonging to a young woman.
“Such a cute dog!” the bag’s owner exclaims. Miller politely asks if she has food in the bag. The woman produces an apple, a couple of lemons and a plastic bag holding a boiled potato and some cooked chicken. The cooked food is OK, but the apples and lemons have to go.
Miller holds the fruit out for Sparky to sniff and pops a treat into the dog’s mouth. “He expects it right away,” Miller explains, as Sparky gulps it down.
Miller drops the confiscated fruit off temporarily at a nearby U.S. Public Health checkstand; later, he will take it to what’s called the Grinding Room at O’Hare for further inspection before it’s destroyed in a grinder. Confiscated meats are burned after inspection.
Fruit can harbor trouble
Bringing in a few pieces of fruit or meat may not seem like such a big deal, but that innocent-looking orange, for example, can introduce agricultural scourges such as citrus canker or harbor pests such as Oriental or Mediterranean fruit flies. (According to the USDA, it’s likely that a piece of wormy fruit carried in by a traveler brought the Medfly to California in 1979; eradicating the pest cost more than $100 million.) Some foreign meat products, such as sausages, can harbor animal disease organisms that can survive processing; if the meat ended up in garbage fed to domestic swine, for example, it could wreak havoc on the American hog industry.
Trotting back to the carousel area, Sparky is momentarily distracted by Jillie, a foxy-looking golden retriever en route to drug-sniffing duties in another part of the terminal. Then it’s back to business. Sparky sniffs a half-dozen bags and several totes before dropping down on his haunches beside a man wearing a backpack.
Yes, the man says, he had bananas in the backpack, but they’re gone now-he ate them on the plane. Sparky gets a treat anyway; discovering residual odor counts as a hit.
On a final pass through the crowd of passengers and baggage, Sparky returns to the woman who had the apples and lemons and hunkers down again, hoping for another treat. No dice. He moves on to a young bearded man wearing a San Diego baseball cap, jumps up to sniff his backpack and sits. At Miller’s request, the man opens his pack and Miller confiscates a banana, a pear and an apple. Sparky gets another treat, gulps it and ambles on.
“He’s slowing down a little these days,” Miller says. “When I first got him in 1988, he would run from bag to bag. He finally caught on that he didn’t have to run.”
During the next 15 minutes or so, Sparky sniffs and sits a half-dozen times, ferreting out oranges, pears, apples, a box of Swiss chocolates and a ham sandwich. The chocolate is OK; the fruit and ham are confiscated.
“If he’s done really well, at the end of the day I give him a bonus biscuit,” Miller says.
Meanwhile, a few carousels away, Beldon and Phyto move quickly through the crowd of passengers waiting for baggage from Heathrow.
Phyto keeps moving as he sniffs quickly at totes and shopping bags, then sits by a woman’s carryall.
“Do you have food in there?” Beldon asks. “Two apples and a ham sandwich,” the woman admits. “But I got them on the plane.”
Beldon explains that the meals served on the plane were catered in a foreign country, so the fruit and meat must be confiscated. Instead of taking the edibles herself-the scent, she explains, might confuse Phyto-Beldon scrawls “K9” on the woman’s U.S. Customs declaration form to alert inspectors to confiscate the food as she leaves the international terminal.
Phyto sits down by a woman’s open bag with a long-stemmed pink rose protruding from it. Beldon quickly checks the bloom for pests.
“It’s OK, no bugs,” she says. “But Phyto gets a treat for that. Whenever he starts finding a bunch of stuff it really boosts his ego, and your ego too.”
A woman in a sari asks Beldon in halting English for directions. A small girl toddles toward Phyto, arms outstretched. Beldon pauses to let the child pet the dog, then moves on.
“Sometimes kids try to pull his tail or people accidentally run into him with their carts,” she says. “You’ve got to look out for your dog all the time.”
Several flights and several hours later, the beagles are ready for an afternoon rest. En route to the Dog Room, Beldon and Sparky pass by the baggage X-ray area, where the luggage of passengers arriving from certain agricultural “high-risk” areas is checked at random. Finds so far today are fairly routine, but sometimes, USDA officer Ross Nichols explains, the X-rays turn up something out of the ordinary-like the guy who arrived from Greece with a freshly slaughtered goat wedged into his suitcase.
“It had the head on it and everything,” Nichols recalls.
It’s a dog’s life
Back in the Dog Room, Sparky and Phyto settle into their respective dog crates for a 90-minute nap. Miller heads for the Grinding Room while Beldon explains how they get their dogs. Phyto was donated to the Beagle Brigade by a family in New York.
“We never buy our dogs or breed them,” she explains. “People donate them or they come from dog pounds.” Most members of the Beagle Brigade work from six to eight years before retiring; if their human partner doesn’t want to take them home, they will be offered for adoption.
A sigh emanates from Phyto’s cage; he’s awake. Beldon lets him out and the beagle leaps on her lap. Beldon puts Phyto down, brushes dog hair from her uniform’s dark slacks and white shirt, checks her flight schedule and picks up the leash. A flight from Switzerland is due any minute.
On the way to the carousel, Phyto catches sight of drug-sniffing Jillie; Beldon detours to allow the two dogs to exchange brief greetings. Back on the job, Phyto sniffs and sits, sniffs and sits, turning up apples, pears, oranges, bananas and a sausage sandwich.
Around 7:15 p.m., Beldon and Phyto and Miller and Sparky call it a day and head for the kennel. The dogs have a run, followed by dinner. By 8 p.m. they’re dozing. Tomorrow’s another day, with fresh challenges and endless opportunities.
“People always ask me, `Doesn’t Phyto ever get tired of smelling stuff?’ ” Beldon says. “The answer is no. He just sniffs and sniffs and sniffs.”
