1. Live fish
In September 2011, TSA (Transportation Security Administration) agents in Los Angeles busted a man trying to smuggle live fish aboard a flight. All 240 of them. The passenger had bought the fish at a local pet shop and tried to check-in four large, hard-sided suitcases each filled with only fish and water. The airline refused to allow him to transport the fish via checked luggage and insisted instead that he ship them via cargo.
2. Snakes and turtles
In August of the same year, TSA agents in Miami caught a man with seven snakes in his trousers, as well as three small turtles. The reptiles were stashed in pantyhose, and according to some reports, if he'd only had one snake and two turtles, he may well have got away with it.
3. Birds
Back in LA, TSA agents discovered two birds wrapped in socks and taped to the leg and chest of a woman who was en route to China. The birds were found when they squawked during a pat-down.
4. A science project
A college student's metal-and-wire science project prompted agents to shut down a checkpoint in Omaha after they saw it on the X-ray monitor.
5. A tiger cub
Officials at Bangkok airport caught a woman trying to smuggle a live tiger cub to Iran. She had sedated the baby tiger and put it into a suitcase with a bunch of stuffed tiger toys. The ploy may have worked if the contents had been give a cursory visual inspection, but a security X-ray machine revealed the fundamental difference between the real and stuffed animals – bones.
6. A cast made from cocaine
Spanish officials in Barcelona caught a 66-year-old man from Chile wearing a cast on his leg made from cocaine. The man did have two fractures below his knee – he'd broken his leg, just in case authorities X-rayed it. And he might have gotten away with it but for the cocaine he'd also hidden in his luggage, which prompted the authorities to have a closer look.
7. A corpse
A woman and her daughter were arrested when airport officials in Liverpool discovered that the pair were pushing the woman’s dead husband in a wheelchair to their Berlin-bound plane. They had covered his eyes with sunglasses and said they just thought he was sleeping, in a bid to save on the cost of transporting the body back home.
