10 choses les plus étranges repérées par la TSA

Il est 5 h 43 un mardi, et tu te tiens les yeux troubles dans la ligne de sécurité de l'aéroport dans l'espoir de prendre ton vol pour Dallas. Tout autour de vous, des agents en uniforme bleu de la Transportation Security Agency (TSA) hurlent des instructions. "Veuillez retirer toutes les chaussures, ceintures, portefeuilles, téléphones portables et clés !" « S'il vous plaît, sortez tous les ordinateurs portables et placez-les dans une poubelle séparée ! » "Veuillez placer tous les gels et liquides dans un sac à fermeture éclair !"

En traînant dans vos chaussettes, votre pantalon sans ceinture glissant lentement vers le sud, vous passez devant un panneau affichant la liste des objets interdits : armes à feu, couteaux, Taser , briquets, feux d'artifice, liquides combustibles. Lorsque vous remettez votre pièce d'identité avec photo à l'agent de la TSA, vous ne pouvez pas vous empêcher de vous demander si tout cela n'est pas une énorme perte de temps. Après tout, combien de crétins essaient vraiment d'apporter une arme à feu dans un avion en cette ère d'hyper-sécurité post-11 septembre ?

Selon la TSA, exactement 1 813 d'entre eux en 2013.

C'est le nombre d' armes à feu que les agents de la TSA ont découvertes dans les bagages à main. Encore plus fou, 81 % de ces armes étaient chargées [source : Burns ].

Pour mémoire, un porte-parole de la TSA nous a informés que les agents ne confisquent pas les objets de contrebande. Ils permettent à un passager de donner l'objet à l'ami qui l'a déposé ; pour le poster quelque part ou pour le remettre à la TSA. La plupart choisissent ce dernier.

En ce qui concerne les objets étranges découverts par les agents de la TSA, les armes à feu ne sont que la pointe de l'iceberg psychopathe. Continuez à lire pour entendre parler de voyageurs audacieux qui ont tenté de faire passer des sacs d'anguilles vivantes, des scies à chaîne et des fragments de crâne humain à travers la sécurité. Soyez simplement reconnaissant de ne pas être derrière eux.

1. Un gilet suicide
2. Animaux en peluche bourrés d'armes à feu
3. Couteau monté sur un déambulateur
4. Scie à chaîne gazeuse
5. Grenade remplie de marijuana
6. Armes de rouge à lèvres
7. Fragments de crâne humain
8. Une masse
9. Sacs d'anguilles vivantes
10. Ceinture de chasteté

C'était une autre matinée chargée au point de contrôle de sécurité de l'aéroport international d'Indianapolis en mars 2013 lorsqu'un bagage à main a déclenché des alarmes dans la machine à rayons X. Imaginez le regard sur le visage de l'agent lorsqu'il a sorti ce qui semblait être un gilet suicide entièrement chargé avec des fils en plastique et des pochettes remplies d'explosifs.

Il s'avère que le passager était un "instructeur d'explosifs" qui utilisait le gilet suicide inerte - oui, ce n'était qu'un faux - comme outil de formation. À l'intérieur du sac se trouvaient également 30 allumettes électriques et des paquets non ouverts de chlorate de potassium et de poudre de titane, des composés hautement combustibles utilisés pour fabriquer de véritables explosifs [source : Burns ].

Instructeur d'explosifs ou non, qu'est-ce qui le pousserait à mettre une réplique de gilet suicide dans son bagage à main ? Prévoyait-il de le mettre si la température de la cabine devenait un peu froide ? Voulait-il impressionner son voisin de siège avec des démonstrations pyrotechniques après le service de boissons offert ?

La TSA comprend que certaines personnes utilisent des explosifs inertes et d'autres armes similaires pour leur travail, mais encourage les gens à les expédier via un service de fret à la place [source : Burns ].

Si vous pensez qu'il est difficile de naviguer seul dans la mêlée de sécurité de l'aéroport, essayez de le faire avec un groupe de jeunes enfants. Alors que vous pliez les poussettes et sortez les tout-petits errants du scanner corporel, il est juste de se demander si les enfants ont vraiment besoin du même contrôle de sécurité que les adultes.

Et puis vous entendez parler de ce type.

Un voyageur à l'aéroport TF Green de Providence, RI, a tenté de faire passer une arme de poing démontée par la sécurité en cachant les trois composants distincts de l'arme à l'intérieur des deux ours en peluche de son tout-petit et d'une poupée Mickey Mouse. L'arme à feu de calibre .40 en était une en peluche, le chargeur à deux cartouches et un percuteur en était une seconde, tandis que la troisième bestiole tenait la glissière [source : Burns ]. Joli, papa. J'espère que tu sortiras de prison à temps pour son diplôme préscolaire.

Like small children, you could argue that seriously old people deserve a "free pass" through airport security. But just when you think that suspender-wearing grandpas are nothing but harmless coots, some old guy tries to shuffle through airport security with a knife strapped to his walker.

Yes, TSA officers at New York's JFK airport spotted a silver knife surreptitiously stowed against the legs of a walker back in 2012 [source: Burns]. Upon close inspection, the weapon looks more like a long butter knife than a dagger, but you still have to question the motives of smuggling it onboard. Then again, have you tried spreading cold butter on a roll at 30,000 feet (9,144 meters) with nothing but a plastic spork?

Canes are another unexpected source of deadly contraband. Every year, TSA officers confiscate dozens of "cane swords," otherwise harmless-looking walking aids that conceal full-length swords and smaller daggers [source: Burns]. Moral of the story: Never cross an old person.

It's happened to all of us. You're packing for a trip to visit relatives in Cleveland and your uncle calls to ask if he can borrow your chain saw. "Sure!" you reply. "Let me just gas it up and stuff it in my suitcase!"

On second thought, that's never happened to anyone. Except one apparently insane person passing through the Elmira Corning Regional Airport in New York. In January 2012, TSA agents removed the offending power tool – gas being flammable and all [source: Burns]. Interestingly, it's perfectly kosher to pack a chain saw into your checked luggage as long as it isn't filled with gasoline.

Here's a tip for all of you amateur drug smugglers out there: If you're going to attempt to sneak a bag of marijuana through airport security, it might not be the best idea to conceal it inside a full-size replica of a deadly explosive device. While TSA agents aren't tasked with sniffing out drugs, they have a knack for spotting items on the X-ray screen that are the exact shape and size of a hand grenade.

A dazed and confused Denver passenger came to this decidedly un-groovy realization when TSA officers removed a novelty hand grenade from his bag and discovered that it was stuffed with, in the immortal words of a TSA blog writer, "a green leafy substance" [source: Burns]. Two strikes for our intrepid traveler. Next time, cram it in your child's Barney doll.

If looks could kill, then the weapon of choice would probably be a lipstick stun gun. In one particularly productive week back in 2012, TSA officers in Burlington, Vt., and Akron, Ohio, confiscated not one, but two weapons posing as harmless lipstick applicators. One was a 350,000-volt lipstick stun gun and the other a lipstick knife with a 2-inch (5-centimeter) blade [source: Burns]. TSA agents also have confiscated lipstick pepper spray.

It makes you wonder, though, isn't there an inherent danger to disguising a 350,000-volt stun gun as something that you might absentmindedly put to your lips at a stoplight? Either way, add "women wearing lipstick " to the list of people not to cross.

You're on vacation in an exotic country and decide to pick up a souvenir made by local artisans. You don't speak whatever language they're speaking, so you point to an earthenware pot that looks like it would hold your umbrella collection. The shop owner makes the international sign for "No, no, no, that pot contains the remains of my dead grandmother!" but you think he's just playing hardball. You hand him a few extra greenbacks and grab the pot as you go.

You only realize your mistake when a TSA agent in Florida takes out the clay pot for further inspection and discovers that it indeed contains a well-preserved human skull . As usual, your wife was right; you should have just bought the "Hard Rock Cafe Turkmenistan" T-shirt.

Yes, TSA agents really did make this gruesome discovery in a checked baggage screening area at the Fort Lauderdale airport in 2013. The passenger claimed ignorance as to the pot's contents. This find naturally slowed down screening as the area turned into a crime scene [source: Burns].

This one is going to take some explaining. When you hear that TSA officers confiscated "a mace," you might assume they found a bottle of self-defense pepper spray . Or, if you're the culinary type, you might think they discovered a smuggled shipment of the fragrant dried nutmeg husk from East India used to make the spice called mace. But you would be wrong again.

The mace that TSA agents confiscated from a traveler at Chicago Midway in 2013 was, in fact, the kind of old-school weapon that barbarians used to swing over their heads when storming a medieval castle . The thick wooden handle of the confiscated mace measured more than a foot (30 centimeters) long and was connected by a long chain to a heavy spiked metal ball [source: Burns]. Just the kind of thing you want to fall out of the overhead luggage compartment during a bumpy landing.

Is there anything more gag-inducing than a bag full of live slithering eels swimming in putrid yellow water? How would you like to have been the TSA agent who unzipped a traveler's checked luggage in Miami to discover not only the "bag o' eels," but dozens of plastic sacks containing a total of 163 tropical fish, 12 tiny sea turtles, plus several other invertebrates and pieces of live coral [source: Burns]? The answer: not very much.

The passenger was apparently trying to smuggle the rare sea creatures from Miami to Maracaibo, Venezuela. Somewhere, a Venezuelan pet store owner is staring longingly at an empty aquarium, waiting on a warm bag of eels that will never arrive.

Privacy advocates lashed out at the full-body scanners the TSA began installing at its security checkpoints in 2007, likening the revealing X-ray images to an illegal "strip search" [source: Martín]. In 2013, hundreds of these scanners were removed from U.S. airports and replaced with less-invasive ones [source: Plungis].

But not before one unlucky passenger had her, uh, highly restrictive undergarment detected by a body scanner in 2012. Yes, the TSA agent on duty had to pull the traveler aside and confirm that she was, indeed, wearing a chastity belt. And no, the confusing piece of clothing was not confiscated, since it was not considered contraband. Plus, no one had the key [source: Burns].

If you're into weird lists like this, keep reading. We've got enough links on the next page to fill 13 airport security bins.

Author's Note: 10 Weirdest Things Spotted by the TSA

My best TSA confiscation story doesn't involve the actual TSA, but an eagle-eyed airport security officer in Mexico. My wife and I were living in Mexico at the time and had just had our second child, a baby boy less than 6 weeks old. It was June, and we were flying back to the U.S. for an extended trip to visit both of our parents. We had our flights booked for months and roused the whole family at 3:30 a.m. to drive the hour-and-a-half to the airport.

Once we negotiated the usual confusion at the ticket counter, we finally breathed easy and made our way through security. I held our 20-month-old's hand and my wife carried the newborn in a colorful sling wrapped tightly around her shoulder and hip. Only after we had passed through the metal detectors and went to grab our carry-on luggage did one of the security agents ask my wife if she could take off her "shawl." My wife smilingly explained that "the baby's sleeping." "What baby?" asked the security officer. It was then that we realized that nobody in the security area or at the ticket counter had any idea that my wife was smuggling a newborn human. For the record, the baby's pacifier did not double as a stun gun.

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