Lover attempts to send phone by carrier pigeon to jailed boyfriend

TO Brazil, where Cristielli Mansa, 21, used a pigeon to transport a mobile phone to her lover, Wagner Machado Rodrigues, 19, who had been imprisoned for drug trafficking.

The pigeon never made it. It fell outside the prison walls. Police found it and soon after spotted Cristielli and another man with a second pigeon inside a plastic bottle with the bottom cut off. This second bird was carrying a ‘backpack’ with a battery, chips and cash.

Once upon a time, a carrier pigeon was better than any phone. Read about that in Pigeons: A pictorial history of humanity and the urban bird.