Just out of curiosity: How did they ever find out?
Oh, this was the Customs people,
not the TSA. TSA is just concerned with making sure that you can't take control of the airplane. Customs and Immigration are the Passport Control people, who also protect us from exotic plants and spicy food, which might harbor some disease or plague which could devastate our glorious homeland (or our glorious agricultural industry).
They are not happy when people bring in food from certain countries (they defend us valiantly from the dreaded Haggis, and hoof-and-mouth disease from the UK), or subversive Cuban Cigars, or narcotic weeds from North Africa. They are always on guard against the nefarious parrot-smugglers, who try and walk through customs with exotic birds stuffed in their trousers (THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENS!) or people who have stashed juvenile Burmese Rock Pythons about their persons (real "snakes on a plane"). They ask questions about whether or not you have been to a farm, or have been in direct physical contact with livestock...
and whether or not you are bringing in seeds or soil. They hand you a confusing blue customs form to fill out on the airplane before you disembark - also asking if you are carrying more foreign money than is healthy, or if you wish to "declare" anything (one is allowed to bring home a certain value of goods purchased overseas without paying an import duty), and they are rather quick to warn you upfront that anything which they deem to be pornographic is subject to seizure...and your failure to declare that you are carrying any of these items is punishable by a stiff fine and/or prison term.
To aid them in their quest, they are accompanied by highly-trained, specially-bred beagles - Customs Beagles. These beagles (not to be confused with TSA Terriers) are
randomly employed in the baggage-claim area of our gateway airports, to ferret out contraband from bags as they are taken off the baggage carousel, and you can't get out of baggage-claim without going through a gate and handing in that damn signed form (which you can only fill out and sign beforehand, on the airplane) and perhaps having your baggage sniffed by a beagle as you stand in line.
Well - highly-trained or not, I have yet to meet a beagle which isn't easily excited at the least little thing, and they make this gawd-awful, loud "YOLP! YOLP! YOLP!" - quite similar to a foxhound - when they get that way. I don't particularly trust them.
And I didn't particularly want to give the Customs people an excuse to look inside my bag, either.
...So
I told them. I carried my little gift planter
in my knapsack, and filled out the blue form to that effect, and repeated that declaration to the person at Passport Control, (who marked the form on the back), because I am a decent, law-abiding, Innocent citizen of the United States
.
...For which I got diverted from the line, and sent to Room 4, with a few other folks. There in Room 4, my bag was X-rayed; but when I showed them my small gift planter, they focused their attention on the seeds and the button of compressed (soil? planting compound?) stuff. I pleaded with them, saying that it was a gift from Ecologically-Sensitive friends in Germany, but with the unyielding coldness of aloof, highly-trained, specially-bred bureaucrats, they haughtily denied my appeal; the cellophane packet of seeds and the button of soil wound up in a special red wastepaper basket.
All I managed to do was get them to at least return the wooden block, plastic cup and cardboard card to me, as a memento.
And so I walked out of Room 4, - looking as downtrodden as I could manage
- and delivered my bag to the US Airways baggage handlers, who sent it continuing on its way to my connecting flight, unopened and unexamined.
...And as it turned out - I didn't see a single beagle. I guess they weren't using them that day.
