Monkeying Around With Airline Security

A man tried to smuggle a monkey into the United States and when he was discovered officials went ape:

The monkey flew coach.

A fist-sized monkey and the man who smuggled him from Peru to New York were forced to part ways at the gate last night.

Sight of the tiny marmoset shocked passengers aboard a LaGuardia-bound jetliner when he scooted out from under the man’s hat and began playing with his ponytail.

The crew of Spirit Airlines Flight 180 were not amused by the curious creature, so they called ahead to the gate for a welcoming party the man wasn’t expecting: the feds.

That’s when the two said their goodbyes.

The man went with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents; the monkey with NYC Animal Care & Control.

“I don’t recall anything like this. The owner appeared to have a whim and purchased the animal on the streets,” said Michael Pastore, the director of field operations for Animal Care & Control. “We don’t know if it’s harboring any disease or viruses.”

It’s actually not a funny matter. Some serious questions: a) If he bought it off the streets, from whom did he buy it? b) How did the person who sold it to him get the monkey? Was it born in captivity, or captured? If it was captured, were any other monkeys killed to capture it? c) Is the person who is selling it to him selling lots of monkeys or was it just this one?

The man claimed not to know it was illegal to bring a monkey in from another country, let alone another continent.

And if officials believe that — given the fact he literally kept the fact he had a monkey under his hat — officials are monkeys’ uncles.

Last night, he was giving that line to the feds, who did not immediately comment on what his fate may be.

As for the monkey, it’ll be quarantined for 31 days, said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman Tom Skinner. After that, he could wind up in a zoo, he said.

The monkey’s journey started in Lima, Peru, late Monday, when the man boarded a flight to Fort Lauderdale, said Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Alison Russell.

After landing Tuesday morning, the man waited several hours before catching a connecting flight to LaGuardia. Somehow he managed to avoid the eye of airline screeners at two airports.

You’d think that if they saw a tail hanging out of the man’s hat onto his forehead they might have been a little bit suspicious. Or perhaps they thought he had his hair done in the latest teen style….

Laura Uselding, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said that had the monkey been carrying weapons or explosives, an alarm would have triggered.

It could have been a Suicide Simian.

On board the plane to New York, people around the man reported the marmoset, which normally lives in forests and eats fruit and insects, was well-behaved.
It was probably a lot more quiet than the infant screaming in the cabin through the whole flight…

MORAL OF THE STORY: Two heads are better than one — unless one of them is the head of a monkey that was smuggled into the United States.

PS: The monkey was lucky. He arrived in the U.S. with all of his stuff.

If he had been an elephant, the airlines would have lost his trunk.