People transport illegal substances and items back and forth across the border between the U.S. and Mexico all the time.

Drugs, guns, all sorts of fun stuff.

We're all painfully aware of this problem. It's old news.

But a few years ago, federal agents in the U.S. began to bust people who were smuggling a new

and bizarre product brought over from Mexico. That product is dead hummingbirds. Not just one or two

dead birds here and there, but often dozens of them at a time. Each of the tiny hummingbirds is dried and

bundled up, specially prepared and individually packaged. Often the hummingbird will be rolled in red

paper or cinched up in a drawstring bag. There may also be colorful satin tassels involved.

These strange morbid trinkets are known as chuparosa. One word for hummingbird in Mexican Spanish is chuporosa. Translated literally, it means

rose sucker. Indigenous people in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America have revered hummingbirds for millennia.

The mythologies of the Aztecs and Inca include stories about hummingbirds, which were said to have magical powers.

And I certainly can't blame the Aztecs or other pre-industrial peoples for thinking hummingbirds are something extra special.

They're amazing. They're captivating creatures. But some people today still think these birds are

magical, not just figuratively, but literally magical. You see, those chuporosa's are peddled as love charms.

A desperate or lonely person might buy a dead hummingbird in an effort to attract a new lover

or keep the one they have.

Many chuporoses are packaged with a little prayer printed in Spanish.

One version reads,

Divine hummingbird with your holy power, I ask that you enrich my life and love so that my lover

will want only me. And you know, this is strikingly similar to what I say to the Rufus

hummingbird that visits my backyard feeder in the summer. I often say to him,

Divine hummingbird with your godlike powers, I beg you to smite my enemies, of which there are many,

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