www.post-gazette.com/pg/03362/255283.stm
A lot of us have stories to tell, but only mine is a fish tale, a contemporary melodrama of the absurd to prepare you for future travels. My boyfriend Trey and I arrived by taxi at the US Airways terminal of La Guardia airport. We had four bags apiece, and one more precious piece of cargo - MJ, my pet fish. MJ is a gorgeous fighting Betta fish, his palate a perfect pastel rainbow. He had become quite a solace to me in New York, a city that can make you feel so small and alone. I missed my cats at college, and it really helped to have this tiny, exuberant creature to look after. Betta fish, research has shown, are the only aquatic animals that can recognize their owner. Id walk into my cold dorm room after a long day and his body would just light up, and he would swim excited circles around his little bowl. Unfortunately, residence hall rules required that I take him home with me for winter break. That was just as well, since there would be no one there to care for him. At La Guardia we proceeded to security and the X-ray inspection point run by the Transportation Security Administration. I have learned by now that, post-9/11, a traveler is better off safe than sorry when proceeding through security. I wasnt prepared, however, for the TSA to stop me right at the entrance, proclaiming that no small pets, including fish, were permitted through security. I had, however, just received the blessing of the ticket agents at US Airways and pre-assured MJs travels with Pittsburgh International Airport security weeks before our travel date. I tried to explain this to the screener who stood between me and the gates, but she would have none of it. I was led back to the US Airways ticket counter, stocking-footed and alone, where the agents reasserted that they did not see a problem for me to have a fish on board, properly packaged in plastic fish bag and secured with a rubber band as MJ was. But the TSA supervisor was called over, and he berated me profusely. He exclaimed that in no way, under no circumstances, was a small fish allowed to pass through security, regardless of what the ticket agents said. Supervisor was causing a grand scene, marshaling the full authority of the TSA to refuse me.
He told me to go outside and give him to whomever I came to the airport with. When I explained I was a college student, alone in New York City save for boyfriend Trey, he brushed me off and said that was not his problem. With no other option that we could see, Trey and I headed toward a rest room. Inside the ladies room, I looked at MJ, swimming happily in his bag, and then the looming porcelain toilet bowl in front of me. It was then, in this hopeless predicament, that Trey, ever brilliant and supportive, had an idea. Trey disappeared into the mens room with the fish and my backpack. When he got into the stall, he let out a bit of the water in MJs bag, and packed the fish into my backpack, which only contained pants. Wedged between some corduroys and khakis, we prayed he wouldnt suffocate or get squished, not to mention fried by the security X-rays that can be fatal to small creatures such as fish. Every Web site I visited, every vet that I contacted said that air travel was no problem for Bettas, as long as I did not, under any circumstances, allow it to go through the X-ray machine. In my research, I had learned that running a fish through an X-ray would be like a human getting radiation without wearing the protective lead cloak. We proceeded to a different security checkpoint, on the other side of the terminal. One, they will see his bag or skeleton in the X-ray and catch us, well get in huge trouble for crossing security and well have to flush the fish. Or, hell miraculously survive and well smuggle him onto the plane and pray that he survives the exposure. We loaded our things onto the belt before the X-ray machine and walked through. Once past the scanner, Trey and I grabbed our things and ran for the gates, eager to find the first bathroom to see if MJ was intact. On the way, we passed by the original security checkpoint we had tried to go through.
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