2024, animals, holidays, Mysteries, Travel

Risky Business

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A 22-year old from Taiwan was apprehended at the Bangkok airport before Christmas after he was found to be carrying two Asian small-clawed otters and a prairie dog.  The man has the critters in socks, taped inside his boxer shorts; security officers were suspicious of the big bulge below the man’s waistband.

If I were a man, I’m not sure I’d put anything with claws and teeth (much less three of them) in my shorts.

I noticed this because I was just thinking about taking a small bag of spices with me to St. Louis last week.  I needed to recreate my sister’s mac and cheese recipe while I was at Nonny’s and was pretty sure that Nonny might not have all these spices.  I didn’t want to buy whole jars of them in St. Louis.  Putting spices in a ziplock made me think about another time I had spices in my suitcase.

About twenty years ago, my bag was the very last one to arrive on the luggage belt after I had come home from Thailand.  The sniffer dog did not alert on my bag but the fact that I had stood there so long waiting brought me to the attention of the sniffer dog’s handler.  Of course this was the one time I ever had something a little suspicious in my bag.  I had purchased some spices at a road-side stand while in Thailand… just baggies of powder with no labels.  Luckily none of them were white and one of them was filled with whole nutmegs, so it was easily explainable.  I was very glad I had the nutmegs and had not purchased anything even remotely white!           

Have you ever transported something you probably shouldn’t have?

21 thoughts on “Risky Business”

  1. i often carry baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) to get my acid stomach steered in the right direction. i have explained it so often to airport folks that i’m guessing it’s my non flustered presentation and the fact that the baggie i carry would be about $50,000 worth

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  2. i remember crossing the canadian border and having to explain the butts of my hand rolled cigarettes in the ash tray to the border guard. upon further inspection digging into the creases between the seats marijuana seeds were discovered
    there’s no getting around that one. i think i just told him that was from a while back and he could turn the car inside out and not find much more than another seed or two if he was lucky.
    i was in my 73 riveria on that trip if i remember correctly not the vw van so i was either a respectable looking hippy or a drug dealer out vacationing
    the vw van made multiple illegal crossings back in 74 just because i forgot i had a stash tucked into one of my little carved wooden boxes in the cabinet next to the peanut butter
    then there’s the time we pulled into the amsterdam train station checked into our hotel and headed over to the coffee house where small amounts of multiple variations of pot and hash. you can only smoke so much and still go out and enjoy the neighborhood so after testing 3 or 4 bowls we hit the streets and walked around and saw the nite life’s dark side as the guys selling ecstasy and speedballs got arrested while the rest of us legal stoners enjoyed the show
    i remember being so full of beer i was looking for a corner to pee in but amsterdam came up with an ingenious way of stopping this. if you peed on a building in the alley there was a little curb like beams bolted to the walls ankle high so the pee running down the wall would come out and soak your shoes and socks rather than pooling on the alley surface. i held it til we got back to the hotel room and went to bed and when i woke up in the morning my colleague was nowhere to be found. we had a big room and he was curled up in a corner having never made it to bed. when i asked him what the heck that was all about he explained that he didn’t want to get caught bringing the last of those pot and hash purchases through customs so he smoked them and crashed in the corner
    he slept the return flight home and we got a good laugh out of it

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  3. With the blessing of my clinical director I smudged my entire office building Friday morning with sage, sweet grass, and bear root. The Regional Director, the head of the agency, got upset because it was so strong smelling. I promised her I would never do it again. She said only after 5:00.

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  4. After my first summer in San Francisco, I did smuggle 5 joints back to Iowa State in my cigarette package. (Yep, I smoked Benson and Hedges menthols in college.) Didn’t get caught luckily, and the irony was I didn’t really like smoking marijuana, but just wanted to be cool. (Forgot to tell this story on the “groovy” day…)

    I think we considered trying to smuggle some Cointreau in our suitcases when returning from France, but decided to declare it.

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  5. Rise and Shine,Baboons,

    I had a jar of jam taken from me by the TSA as contraband. Wild Grape. What a waste! And my favorite flavor. I meant it to be a hostess gift.

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    1. We were checking onto an airplane a few years ago and had applesause or something for a snack for daughter because she has celiac disease. When the TSA lady finally understood she said “Can you say the magic word?” We said “…please?”, no, she meant “dietary”!

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    2. I lost a small jar of peanut butter to TSA on my last trip to South Africa. I took it because on long flights and layovers in airports, I wanted to have a little bit of protein pick me up. I had to make do other ways.

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  7. I’m so gosh darn innocent about everything! Here I thought I was such a scofflaw, but clearly I’m a little goody two shoes.

    I did go on a road trip once with two guys right after our high school graduation. We went up into Canada through Sault Saint Marie and had no problem at all with Canadian customs. That boosted our confidence. We drove through the Canadian provinces to Montreal. The guys I was with had something they were smoking and I confess to participating at the time, but it wasn’t my stuff. They smoked it all up before we even got to Montreal. Kind of a funny story, but when we got there we were tired of camping and needed showers. We decided to get a motel room in Quebec. The Quebecois were surprisingly hostile. They were the unfriendliest people I had ever met. Clearly they weren’t going to rent a room to three scruffy American kids who appeared to be high as kites. So I had to ask for a room for myself and two guys in my limited French. They really did roll their eyes but finally allowed us the room.

    Anyway, we left the next morning as soon as possible. We cleaned out the car somewhere, making sure there was nothing we missed. Then we stuffed our luggage back in and headed south for the border, where they tore our car apart. We were pulled aside and kept there all day while they went through the car with a fine tooth comb and a magnifier. They found nothing at all. Then they looked over at Mark and checked again. It’s funny in retrospect but John got really crabby after that and it ceased being fun with him.

    Finally they let us through and we entered in northern Vermont, headed over to Maine and spent a few days at Bar Harbor. What a beautiful place. I’d like to go back there.

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  8. I flew out to Napa, California for a job and a small sized propane tank was in my tools chest. The lock was cut and the tank taken. Thankfully the authorities took the torch trigger off and let it pass.

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  9. Never had an issue but never carried anything. Every time I crossed the Canadian border as an adult i was pulling a camper with a wife and two kids. Except twice without the camper. Never had a problem. Never had a problem with TSA. Only had to go back through the screener twice as I recall. When you travel as much as we did for business you learn how to avoid the hassles.
    My best friend when I was teaching was 6’7”. Wafer thin with long hair and beard. He would go duck hunting in Canada with a friend who lived there. He could go through a full search on both sides of the border. Once with body cavity searches by the US guards. He was crossing at one of the main drug importing routes in the US at that time.
    I don’t like the effect marijuana has on me.it invoked emotions I don’t like.
    Clyde

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  10. i asked the border guards one time why i always got my car torn about every time through. he said well you’re from minnesota. i said yeah … so…
    he said you all think it’s ok to bring guns in and not claim them. i said oh ok now i get it
    i don’t know that was an issue before

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  11. Long ago, many people swore by Coors beer. I never understood that and why my classmates paid a premium for something Hamm’s did as well. And we had a bear! What did Coors have?!

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  12. Exotic pet trafficking is so bad. I track some of the bird things going on. It’s only a little bit of what the ultra rich have going on. These people have zero interest in the animals. It would be MORE humane to kill the bird and nail it to the perch then to display it for a party and then ignore it. This is Wes. Yes, I’m pissed.

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