Wierdest thing found in shakedown....

[Craven Moorehead]

Whats the wierdest thing (or things) you have found during a shakedown?

In 2001, I was making rounds in the unit, I stopped by one cell to have a look around. When I opened one of the lockers.....A God-Damn DUCK Flew out at me!!!!!
We had ducks ALL OVER the compound back then. After $hitting on myself...I took the poor duck outside and set him free. Some of the inmates were relieved. The dude....a REAL crazy Mariel Cuban was planning to kill, feeather and cook the poor thing.

Then, in 2002, I was shaking down a cell and went to look in a shoebox under the bunk. I was all squated down, and when I opened the box.........
SNAKE!!!!!!!!!! I lunged backwards (still squating mind you) and fell over on my back.....scrambled up and back a few feet. Luckily i didnt "spill" the snake out of the box. After cleaning the $hit out of my drawers, I set that little guy free too.

Good times....

[ATW-Hack]

I know a thug that keeps blue belly lizards on a regular basis. One night I was morning watch compound officer and was asked to stop by one of the units. The female officer sounded a little off so I asked what was going on and she said "just come here now!" me and another guy ran over to the unit to find a thug standing on his toilet. The dude had gotten up to take a dump at about 4am and while doing his buisness was bitten by the 3 1/2 foot gopher snake that was sleeping under his toilet!!! He was convinced that it was a rattle snake and he was going to die I had her rack the door slide the snake out with my boot and picked it up to release out side the jail. At mainline in the morning atleast a hundred thugs called me the croc hunter

[Arbo]

Dam!!!!!!!!! I hate snakes!!!!!!!!!!

Not really weird, but one of the best I ever had was quite alot of heroin that a guy was cutting into single hits. It was all laid out on the desk in the cell. I gathered everything up, and left the cell. While I was walking up the range to head to the office, the inmate came out of the mop closet where he had been making a cup of coffee. Talk about a stressfull moment. The worst part was that we never could pin it on him. It wasn't his cell that he was doing it in, and the inmate that was assigned to that cell was in the auditorium when it went down. The guy that was doing the "work" fronted me about the book I was carrying. That's what told me that it was his. Oh well, I had the satisfaction of costing him...BIG TIME

[shakedownshorti]

Baby rabbits, kittens, baby birds, all hidden in cells, and over at the chapel a baby snake that the Chaplain thought was a rattle snake but wasn't....I love snakes and used to love to pick them up and walk around holding them because the inmates were scared to death of them!!!! I could sure clear out a cell!!! LOL!!!

[Craven Moorehead]

Great stories! Keep 'em comin.....

[KBCraig]

We had a crazy Marielito who kept building Santeria shrines in his locker. You'd pop open his locker and find voodoo dolls, burning candles (stolen oil from food service, and cotton wicks), rotting food offered to the "saint", etc.

[Hack]

Originally Posted by KBCraig

We had a crazy Marielito who kept building Santeria shrines in his locker. You'd pop open his locker and find voodoo dolls, burning candles (stolen oil from food service, and cotton wicks), rotting food offered to the "saint", etc.

Sounds like some of the ones we used to have. I can't say what the weirdest thing is in comparison to what I have seen here so far.

[Crosstimbers Okie]

When I worked for the state, we had a crew of inmates called the "Gun Gang." This was a crew of about 20-30 inmates who worked outside the fence under the supervision of four armed officers and a lieutenant on horseback. They later traded the horses for four-wheelers for obvious reasons.

One of the Gun Gang inmates who lived on my unit was a young Lifer named Jimmy Mask Offender Lookup - Detail . Jimmy would catch Pygmie Rattlesnakes while out mowing or cutting brush and the sorry-ass officers on the Gun Gang would let him keep them. Then I would come in on 4-12, shake down Jimmy's cell and find a five gallon bucket with half a dozen little Rattlesnakes living in it.

Of course the snakes had to be fed, so Jimmy also caught food for them--mice, lizards, bugs, birds, spiders--you name it, Jimmy had it.

[USPBOB]

about 22 years ago when i was a rookie, packing a thugs property that had been locked up. he had an open pack of smokes that i looked into only to see an eye staring back at me. his Glass eye that for some reason he didn't have with him when he was locked up!

[Kyle313]

Originally Posted by KBCraig

We had a crazy Marielito who kept building Santeria shrines in his locker. You'd pop open his locker and find voodoo dolls, burning candles (stolen oil from food service, and cotton wicks), rotting food offered to the "saint", etc.

Sounds like a Hatian we had in one of our dorms when I working State DOC....he would make voodoo dolls and put "roots" on officers he thought did him wrong.....his locker was almost always a good catch for chicken bones during a search, he would have them laying around for whatever his Hatian voodoo ritual used them for.....and my bet is they ended up as shanks for other inmates when he was done with them......