What the TSA found

It was post 9/11, and security had gotten tighter in airports. Between the 9/11 attacks - two of the flights originated from Boston's Logan Airport - and the crazy-arsed shoebomber a few months later, flying had become more of a hassle. 

It was late March, and I had had to park in remote at Logan, so was taking a shuttle bus to my terminal.

For some reason, I was looking through my briefcase - a hunter-green, soft-sided, monogrammed LL Bean briefcase that was great for overnight travel: laptop compartment, and compartment for personal items (toothbrush, makeup, change of undies, extra blouse, tee-shirt to sleep in...) -  and came across a large bread knife.

Swell.

It wasn't a great breadknife. I'd gotten it at some colleague's Tupperware party, somewhere along the line. But I rather liked it.

Why, you might ask, was I carrying a breadknife in my briefcase?

It was around St. Patrick's Day, and I'd gone through my usual Irish soda bread baking spree, and had brought a loaf into work. With a knife to cut it with. I'd never bothered to take the breadknife out.

So there it was, cradled in a folded paper plate secured with a rubber band.

I made my way to the front of the shuttle bus.

Without taking the knife out of my briefcase - people were still very much on edge when traveling; I had (male) colleagues who would get seated on a plane and confer with their (male) seatmates about what they would do if - I explained to the driver that I was Crocodile Dundee-ing, and asked her if she'd like a breadknife.

She would, indeed.

Not wanting to be tackled, I waited for everyone else to get off at my terminal, then slipped the security violation out of my briefcase and handed it to her.

I can only imagine if I'd neglected to spot it ahead of time. What would TSA have made of this middle-aged female business traveler wearing a Hillary Clinton pants suit, sensible low heels, and a trench coat, but carrying a weapon with her?

Sure, I didn't look like a standard issue terrorist, but you never know. 

Would I have been thrown up against the wall? Patted down? Strip-searched?

Fortunately, I had rid myself of the troublesome object before I got to security.

Phew.

I hadn't thought of that incident in years when I saw an article on TSA's Top Ten Catches of the Year for 2022, which was published recently by TSA on their social media accounts.

The list dates back to at least 2016, when the champions included dead sea horses in a brandy bottle from the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, a bullet-bedazzled gas mask from Miami International Airport and a movie prop corpse at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. In 2021, the honors went to a chain saw from the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, bullets stashed in deodorant at Atlantic City International and meth wrapped in a burrito at Houston Hobby Airport. (Source: WaPo)

Meth wrapped burrito is one thing. But "dead sea horses in a brandy bottle."  Would that have been okay if it had been in a checked bag, or is transporting dead sea horses - in or outside of a brandy bottle - strictly verboten?

So what did TSA find in 2022? 

Someone carrying a wad of cash in his crutches. Turns out, that's not against the rules, as money "does not fall under TSA's definition of 'things that can cause a catastrophic incident on a flight.'" (Nor would dead sea horses, I'm guessing.) Nonetheless, it was something that set off alarms in El Paso.

Someone in Milwaukee tried to take an inert grenade onto a plane.

Who carries an grenade with them, ert or not?

...officers find a surprisingly high number of hand grenades. Even if it’s inactive, the weaponry is not permitted because it can create panic among passengers on a plane. 

At Dulles, someone had a couple of electric cattle prods in their guitar case. The guitar made it on board; the cattle prods were confiscated. Scarier, in Atlanta, someone tried to carry on a gun hidden in a PlayStation.

In Boise, an enterprising - or perhaps just plain dumb - mule was caught with scrunchies full of drugs. 

A knife was found in a laptop in Richmond. Unlike my innocent breadknife, wrapped in its paper plate, this knife was hidden in the laptop itself. After the laptop triggered an alarm, agents unscrewed the laptop's covers to retrieve the knife. 

The guy with the wadded up money in his crutch may have been innocent, but how about the knucklehead in Rochester who had a gun in a sling?

His response to their discovery: “I forgot I put it in my sling.”

Ummmm. You didn't feel something a little heavy in that sling??? 

At JFK, TSA officers found the pieces of a handgun - carefully wrapped in plastic - in two jars of Jim peanut butter. Choosy contraband smugglers apparently choose Jif. Unlike the guy with the gun in the swing who claimed "oops," this perp definitely wrapped the gun pieces with malice aforethought. He was arrested.

It turns out that, even if checked, peanut butter "always triggers an alarm. It might have explosive material." Containers in checked baggage may end up being swabbed.

In September, I packed (in a checked bag) two large jars of Jif to bring to my niece Molly, who's living for the year in Jif-free Dublin. I don't think Molly's Jif was swabbed...

Not to be outdone by the Jif gunsel, some goon was caught at Fort-Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport with a raw chicken stuffed with a gun. 

Who carries a raw chicken onto a plane, with or without gun stuffing?

The top item on the list was found just before Halloween, when agents in LA found "12,000 blue pills of suspected fentanyl inside boxes and sleeves of SweeTarts, Skittles and Whoppers."

Yikes! You mean those rumors about people giving out drugs for Trick or Treat weren't as unfounded as we thought?