What should you do if you want to smuggle a turtle though an airport? Disguise it as a hamburger of course. That's what one man did at a Chinese airport.
A man identified as Mr. Lee was stopped at Guangzhou's international airport on Monday morning after airport security noticed something strange about a sandwich inside his bag. An X-ray machine detected strange protrusions poking out of it, the South China Morning Post reported.
The airport security thought it might be a turtle, so they questioned the man. "Sir, are you sure there are no turtles in your bag?" one agent asked, according to a report in the Guangzhou Daily.
Mr. Lee, who was on his way to Beijing, insisted that he wasn't carrying an animal, but his behavior was suspicious. "There's no turtle in there - just a hamburger," he told the agents "There's nothing special to see inside."
The agents knew he was lying and Mr. Lee was eventually forced to admit that he was indeed carrying a turtle, disguised as a hamburger. The man handed the turtle over to a friend and went onto his flight without his scaly friend. When asked why he had the animal, the man told the agents that he wanted to travel with his "beloved" turtle.
Smuggling wildlife and drugs is not allowed at airports and people have tried strange techniques to try to get away with it. For instance, a British man was arrested when he tried to fly out of Rio de Janeiro with more than 1,000 liv spiders in his suitcase in 2009. This came a month after two passengers tried to smuggle 10,000 endangered sea turtles in their luggage at Calcutta's international airport.
Smuggling a turtle in a hamburger bun seems to be a first. The story went live on social media site Weibo and some commented, feeling bad for the animal. "That poor turtle," one user wrote. "It had to absorb all those X-rays!"
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
