Contraband along the Texas-Mexico border flows both ways. Drugs tend to come north. Desperados on the lam tend to flow south. But every now and then there's a novelty like this woman and her strange pet.
 
The Brownsville Herald picks up the tale:
 

It wasn't marijuana, cocaine or even heroin that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized at a Brownsville international bridge, but a live beetle covered in jewelry.

CBP says on Tuesday, Jan. 12, a woman was crossing from Mexico into the United States at [Brownsville's] Gateway International Bridge when she admitted to wearing the live jewelry. She told officers she bought the bug in Mexico.

The live brooch was attached to her sweater by a chain and safety pin.

The beetle appears to have been painted and had a gold tone chain glued to its back. The jewels were then attached to the chain.

If you've ever crossed the border bearing anything beyond the requisite one bottle of tequila or vanilla extract, you won't be surprised to learn that Customs took the attempted importation of the bling-encrusted beetle very seriously. The unnamed owner of the insect was sent to a secondary inspection, whereupon the beetle was seized and remanded to a detention facility near Los Indios. At press time, its fate remains unknown. (Since the woman declared the beetle she was neither charged nor cited with any offense.)

And we probably shouldn't be too surprised at this either, but PETA is taking umbrage: "This woman's choice of a fashion accessory gives new meaning to the term fashion victim," fumed media liaison Jaime Zalac.
 
As Hank Hill once said to LuAnn Platter, "Every time I think you can't say anything dumber, you keep talkin'."
 
Here's more from Zalac:

Beetles may not be as cute and cuddly as puppies and kittens, but they have the same capacity to feel pain and suffer. It's ironic. We spend hours each week helping kind people find humane ways to relocate lost insects such as ants, bees and roaches that wander into their homes. People feel so good about not hurting them, while this woman paid someone to mutilate them.

Wait, the ants and roaches in my kitchen are lost, mere wandering sojourners seeking enlightenment? The greedy little bastards certainly seem to know where they are going to us. And people need help on figuring out how to remove them from their kitchen?
 
Maybe if more of these critters were decked out in bling people wouldn't be so eager to throw them out. I know if more of the roaches in my kitchen looked like Liberace or Lil' Wayne or Bishop Don Magic Juan I might let 'em kick it with me a little longer.