FL Woman Busted For Turtles In Bra, Prompting Unusual TSA Warning

MIAMI, FL — The Transportation Security Administration issued an unusual but stern warning to travelers who try to sneak animals through security after a Florida woman was busted at Miami International Airport after hiding a pair of turtles in her bra.

“OK friends, please — and we cannot emphasize this enough — stop hiding animals in weird places on your body and trying to sneak them through security,” the TSA said in a July 24 social media post.

“No, really,” the agency continued, perhaps anticipating the locker room talk the warning would inspire. “We want you to be able to travel with your pets, and you ‘turtle-ly’ can, but please travel with them safely.”

The Miami incident wasn’t an isolated one-off. Last year, TSA agents at the Miami airport prevented a man from smuggling a bag of snakes inside his pants, CBS News reported. A year earlier, airport officials confiscated a bag of Amazon parrot eggs and live birds after they heard chirping coming from an international traveler’s carry-on baggage. The person had just arrived from Nicaragua and had a layover in Miami before going on to Taiwan.

It’s not just a Florida thing.

In March, a Pennsylvania man who stuffed a turtle in his pants was caught by TSA screening stations at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.

“A TSA officer administered a pat-down of the area of the man’s body where the alarm was triggered and in doing so, determined that there was something concealed in the area of the man’s groin,” TSA said at the time. “When asked if there was something hidden in his pants, the man reached down the front of his pants and pulled out a live turtle that was wrapped in a small blue towel.”

The TSA said at the time it’s not unusual for passengers to conceal knives and other weapons in their clothing, shoes and luggage.

“However, I believe this is the first time we have come across someone who was concealing a live animal down the front of his pants. As best as we could tell, the turtle was not harmed by the man’s actions,” Thomas Carter, the TSA’s federal security director for New Jersey, said in a statement.

The Pennsylvania man’s red-eared slider turtle survived, but the Florida woman’s decision to stuff her bra with turtles was a death sentence for one of them.

The TSA said the surviving turtle was turned over to the Florida Department of Fish and Wildlife.

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