baggage claim

The flight from Big Corn Island to Managua is always met with several hulking Labradors.

Big Corn Island has a history of piracy. Rum smugglers and slave profiteers coexisted with dissipated English colonists and the wretched native inhabitants. To this day, the locals make eye contact, offer a small but friendly smile, but then slide their eyes down and away, not seeing any baggage or motives carried by an island visitor.

When we arrived in Managua, our bags were pulled from the belly of the little plane and deposited in a pile for the efficient Labradors. They climbed and sniffed. Their handlers, bored, toyed with the straps of their AK-47s.

One of the dogs suddenly stopped and cocked its head in confusion, pawing at a beaten suitcase near the bottom edge of the pile. His handler shouted to two nearby guards, and a weatherbeaten, toothless, elderly black man stepped quickly and voluntarily forward into their custody.

The old man, dignified even while gesticulating wildly at the suitcase, argued with the guards. They hesitated, but then glanced at each other and shrugged. The guards let him open his suitcase, but one of them silently moved his hand up towards the trigger of his gun.

In front of the now-attentive crowd, the man knelt down and cautiously unzipped the suitcase. With evident tenderness, he pulled a tiny, frantically wiggling puppy out of the bag and toward his chest. He looked up hopefully towards the guards. The puppy licked the man's neck.

The confused Labrador sniffed the rest of the suitcase. It was clean. The crowd sighed, happy with a live puppy and no drugs. The guards smiled, the monotony of their job broken for a few moments. The man stepped back into the crowd and was enveloped by cooing women.

A nearby English couple sniffed and shook their heads disapprovingly at us. "Amazing," they clucked, "just amazing what they will do to animals here."

We edged away. It was, after all, a happy ending in a poor country where pets are often simply another mouth to feed. The old man cuddled his puppy, grinning happily at the crowd.