TSA finds 4-foot boa constrictor inside woman’s carry-on luggage at Florida airport
Tampa Fl Jan 9 2023
A snake almost made it on a plane in Florida after the Transportation Security Administration found a boa constrictor inside a traveler’s luggage.
TSA shared an X-ray image posted by agency spokesperson Lisa Farbstein on Friday, which showed Bartholomew, a 4-foot boa constrictor, inside a woman’s carry-on at Tampa International Airport on Dec. 15.
“Our officers at Tampa International Airport didn’t find this hyssssssterical!” TSA said in an Instagram post. “Coiled up in a passenger’s carry-on was a 4’ boa constrictor! We really have no adder-ation for discovering any pet going through an x-ray machine.”
The 4-foot boa constrictor was inside a woman’s luggage at Tampa International Airport in December.
When officers informed the woman of the snake’s appearance on the X-ray, she told officials it was her emotional support pet. The airline was later contacted and didn’t allow the snake to fly on the plane, TSA said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Pets like dogs and cats are allowed to fly with their owners, but TSA says they should never be put through the X-ray machine. A cat was found inside a checked luggage at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in November, followed by a dog found inside a carry-on backpack “accidentally sent through the X-ray” at a Wisconsin airport in December.
Instead, the agency says travelers should let officers know they have an animal and remove it from any carrier they are in, as well as declare it to their airline.
However, the same rules don’t apply to “danger noodles.”
“Do you have asp-irations of taking a snake on a plane?” TSA added in the Instagram post. “Don’t get upsetti spaghetti by not understanding your airline’s rules. For instance, airlines don’t allow nope ropes in carry-on bags and only a few allow them to slither around in checked bags, if packaged correctly.”
It’s not the first time snakes have been caught on the X-ray machine, as 20 of them were part of 109 live animals found in the luggage of two women in Thailand in June. In February, the silhouette of a long snake could be seen above passengers on a flight in Malaysia.
