From the NY Daily News:
The Weird and Wacky Stuff Confiscated at New York Customs
Attention, airline passengers: Leave the chain saws, chocolate-covered heroin bars and frozen monkey heads at home.
An Australian traveler made worldwide headlines last month when he tried to smuggle two live pigeons past airport security by concealing them against his legs under a pair of tights.
Customs and Transportation Security Administration officials at New York airports say they have just as many wacky tales to tell.
In recent months, agents have seized everything from a drug-stuffed dead cat to a 7-pound shipment of chocolate-coated heroin bars.
Then there are the weapons. More than seven years after Sept. 11, some air travelers think nothing of trying to walk onto planes armed to the teeth. "People are still showing up at the checkpoint with loaded guns, explosives, fireworks," said TSA spokeswoman Lara Uselding. "We got nun-chucks, Chinese throwing stars [and] swords concealed inside canes this year."
Need to cut down a tree on vacation? You still need to read those pesky TSA rules. "Someone even once tried to bring a fully gassed-up power chain saw through a checkpoint," Uselding said.
Since December, customs officials at Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports have seized more than $2 million worth of creatively concealed drugs, jewels and a collection of 19th-century Fabergé treasures. In December, they seized $1.2 million in diamonds from a passenger flying in from Tel Aviv who had claimed he had nothing to declare.
They ... have intercepted multiple cocaine shipments worth nearly $600,000 concealed in canned vegetables, a Kahlua bottle and an attaché case.
TSA employees manning the checkpoints need to have strong stomachs. They've seen the drug-filled dead cat, a frozen monkey head and a suitcase bursting with wriggling cockroaches in the past few weeks, said Uselding. A Chilean family once tried to wheel a dead relative through security in a wheelchair at JFK to avoid paying the fee for transporting a body.
Agents at Newark Airport recently confiscated more than 7 pounds of heroin coming in from Bogota, Colombia, disguised as chocolate bars. The faux candy even had stamped indentations dividing the bars into realistic-looking bite-size chunks. "Those were actually produced in a candy [factory]," said customs spokeswoman Lucille Cirillo.
