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Snakes on a plane? Nothing unusual about that. During the past year or so, two passengers in Cairo tried to bring snakes aboard. As did two passengers going to Vietnam.

Security officials became suspicious of the 22-year-old Saudi man’s bags when the X-ray machine at the departure gate gave odd readings. Police said they opened the bags and found a large number of reptiles, including at least one cobra, squirming to escape

Transporting live reptiles out of the country is illegal in Egypt, but the passenger said he was unaware of the ban and that the snakes, crocodiles and chameleons were needed by a Saudi university for scientific experiments, police said.

In May, another Saudi man was caught at the Cairo airport carrying 700 live snakes in his carry-on luggage. He told authorities that snakes were often kept in Saudi Arabia by storekeepers in glass jars or used as pets.

But it’s not just snakes, passengers have tried to bring everything from bones to holy water on board planes. And sometimes they succeeded.

Did you know there’s a monkey in your hair?

Last August, a man smuggled a monkey from Peru by stashing the creature under his hat. Their destination was New York and nobody noticed the marmoset until the second leg of the trip.

During the flight, people around the man noticed that the marmoset, which normally lives in forests and eats fruit and insects, had emerged from underneath his hat, [Spirit Airlines spoksewoman Alison] Russell said.

“Other passengers asked the man if he knew he had a monkey on him,” she said.

The monkey spent the remainder of the flight in the man’s seat and behaved well, said Russell, who didn’t know how it skirted customs and security.

So your shoes have to come off in the security line, but your hat can stay where it is.

Madonna Shoots Up

I suppose some people do need to bring hypodermic needles on board. But shooting up at your seat is another matter.

The singer is said to have refused food on the seven-hour flight and only drank bottled water.

A source told Closer magazine: “Seven hours was a long time to go without eating. Madonna was quiet, talking to the air staff only to ask for water.

“Just before landing, she brought out the phials of vitamins and injected herself.”

It is understood that Madonna was injecting herself with B6 and B12 vitamins to boost her energy.

Next time try a sandwich, Madge.

Don’t Lose Your Head or Skull

Police in Munich detained a woman whose luggage revealed the presence of a human skull and other bones. When questioned the woman said she was carrying the 11-year-old bones of her brother sealed in a plastic bag.

It turned out, however, that the woman was simply trying to fulfill the last wish of her brother—who died 11 years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil—to be buried in Italy.

The travelers produced the appropriate papers from Brazilian authorities for the unusual transport, and were allowed to carry on their way to Naples—bones and all.

Next time you’re packing for a plane trip remember: 4 ounces of liquid–not OK, 11-year-old corpse–perfectly fine. As long as you have the proper documentation.

Airport baggage screeners found a human head with teeth, hair and skin in the luggage of a woman who said she intended to ward off evil spirits with it, authorities said Friday.

Don’t Let the Cat Out of The Bag … or Luggage

The tiger-striped cat flew from Ft. Lauderdale to Houston. in her owner’s husband’s luggage. It was a spontaneous getaway. Kelly Levy was frantic when she discovered the cat missing after driving her husband to the airport.

Then she got a phone call.

“Hi, you’re not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas, and I accidentally picked up your husband’s luggage. And when I opened the luggage, a cat jumped out,” Levy recalled the caller saying, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

Rob Carter, of Fort Worth, told The Dallas Morning News for its online edition Tuesday that he made it home with the suitcase.

“I went to unpack and saw some of the clothes and saw it wasn’t my suitcase,” Carter said. “I was going to close it, and a kitten jumped out and ran under the bed. I screamed like a little girl.”

More than 3 Ounces of Holy Water or Alcohol … Fail

French airport security officials refused to allow a passenger to bring a container of holy water that he’d collected from Lourdes.

Airport officials barred other pilgrims on the Mistral Air flight from taking holy water from the shrine back to Rome, the Italian news agency Apcom reported. The pilgrims protested that they had waited in long lines to fill up their bottles with holy water from the grotto.

Airport officials refused to comment on the incident, saying only that international regulations banning passengers from carrying containers with more than 3 ounces of liquid aboard are applied across the board.

As big a danger to airport security as holy water is, it’s nothing compared to vodka. That stuff can kill ya.
A man nearly died from alcohol poisoning after quaffing a liter (two pints) of vodka at an airport security check instead of handing it over to comply with new carry-on rules, police said Wednesday. The incident occurred at the Nuremberg airport on Tuesday, where the 64-year-old man was switching planes on his way home to Dresden from a holiday in Egypt.

New airport rules prohibit passengers from carrying larger quantities of liquid onto planes, and he was told at a security check he would have to either throw out the bottle of vodka or pay a fee to have his carry-on bag checked as cargo.

Instead, he chugged the bottle down — and was quickly unable to stand or otherwise function, police said.

A doctor called to the scene determined he had possibly life-threatening alcohol poisoning, and he was sent to a Nuremberg clinic for treatment.

Better to stick to wine. How about a nice port?

Mark Morford was able to bring a bottle of the fortified wine onboard when he was flying from Spokane to San Francisco. Well, kind of. The columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle drank the wine for breakfast. It was the security screener’s idea.

“You want to go have a few sips before you come back through?”

Wait, what?

I paused. This was cute little Spokane airport. There were no bars back down by the entrance, no restaurants or even little cafes (the few the airport had were all up beyond security), nothing but a sterile, bare-bones baggage claim and a handful of ticket counters back where he was gesturing and, beyond that, 19 degrees of bitter cold winter.

“But there’s no bar down there,” I stammered, momentarily confused and momentarily trying to be some sort of upstanding, law-abiding citizen. Or something. “You mean I can just swig an open container of booze out in the open? I don’t need to be in some sort of designated bar area?” Duh.

He looked at me curiously, like I’d just returned from the jungles of Malaysia and had clearly lost all sense of how civilized society functioned. Then he shrugged, and smiled. “I don’t think that matters. Up to you.”

It was 11 a.m. I had two egg salad sandwiches, some spelt pretzels, a small bag of gourmet chocolate mints, a well-loaded iPod, a laptop. And an hour and a half. I didn’t ponder for long. “Well hell, OK then.”