Liar, Liar, Ants in Pants

A Nairobi judge has determined that the man who showed up at the airport with 2,200 ants in test tubes was, in the court’s words, “not an entirely honest person”

Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.

A Chinese national named Zhang Kequn was sentenced Wednesday to one year in prison and fined $7,700 after Kenyan authorities discovered more than 2,200 live ants packed into test tubes and tissue rolls in his luggage at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. The crime carries the same legal weight in Kenya as elephant ivory trafficking, but comes with a much higher level of professional embarrassment when caught. The ants were bound for China, where collectors pay up to $220 each to watch them build tiny civilizations inside glass terrariums. Zhang’s luggage, conservatively valued at somewhere north of $400,000 in ants alone, was the most expensive carry-on at the airport that did not belong to a UN diplomat or a drug cartel.

Judge Irene Gichobi described Zhang as lacking in remorse and “not an entirely honest person,” which is the Kenyan judiciary’s equivalent of calling someone a liar, liar, pants on fire, except in this case, the pants had ants. Zhang had initially been charged with wildlife trafficking and conspiracy, which carries a seven-year sentence, but the conspiracy charge was dropped after what one assumes was either a legal technicality or the realization that proving a man conspired with ants would set a complicated precedent. He pleaded guilty to the trafficking charge, which tells you everything about how strong the evidence was when the best legal strategy available is “yes, those are my ants.”

The case is the latest in what Kenyan authorities are now formally describing as “rising cases of dealing in large quantities of garden ants,” a phrase that did not exist in any legal framework two years ago. Last year, two Belgian 19-year-olds were caught in Nakuru County with nearly 5,000 ants stored in cotton-stuffed test tubes and told the magistrate they were “collecting for fun.” They were fined $7,700, same as Zhang, which either reflects a standardized ant-crime tariff or the fact that nobody has gotten around to writing a more specific one.

The alleged supplier, a 35-year-old Kenyan named Charles Mwangi, was selling queen ants for roughly $0.75 each to middlemen who flipped them internationally for $100 to $220 apiece, a markup of 29,000 percent that would make even pharmaceutical companies blush. Mwangi has pleaded not guilty and remains free on bail, which is notable mainly because he is accused of supplying ants to three of the four people convicted in the past year, making him either Kenya’s most prolific ant dealer or its least careful one. The ants themselves require no refrigeration, produce no smell, and fit inside carry-on luggage with room to spare, which makes them the perfect contraband for anyone willing to commit a felony that, when explained at parties or to other prisoners, will never sound serious.

Zhang will serve his year and then be deported to China, where he will presumably explain to someone why he came home without ants. Judge Gichobi noted the need for “a stiff deterrent sentence” against wildlife trafficking, the same legal framework Kenya built to protect elephants and rhinos. The law makes no distinction between large game animals and ants. The ants, presumably, do not care either way.

This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.