Communing with nature at ATL

ATLANTA -- Beyond the obvious charms of Caribou Coffee and the CNN Newstand, the international terminal of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport offers a delightful menagerie hidden in plain sight. A brown hyena with teeth bared, a scaly crocodile, an impala with curling horns (photos here). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confiscated these taxidermied animals and animal products from smugglers caught violating the international convention on trafficking in endangered species. “Buyer beware”, the display warns. Halfway through the E gates, a gargantuan elephant’s femur, about five feet long and covered with carved animal figures, seems like an obviously illegal buy, but others are less blatant, like the women’s black leather wallet that turns out to have been made of elephant skin, or the boxes of traditional herbal remedies that contain rhinoceros horn. Displays like this bring the issue to the attention of people who might otherwise not find out about endangered-species laws until stopped at customs. The taxidermied animals frozen in time send a powerful message. “Can you believe people would do something like this?” one woman marveling at the display commented. “And so much of it!” Yeah, and that’s just the stuff that a small federal agency manages to find at all.