- Or, when wanderlust hits a critter.
Traveling is fun. You get to see new places, eat different foods, meet people who think differently from you… Fun.
Is it any wonder, then, that occasionally animals want to get in on the fun too? Every now and then, globetrotters and transportation crews find a furry (or scaly or feathery) surprise.
Here are six stories of cute and/or strange animals who decided to go on a little trip.
1) Snake on a Plane
If Samuel L. Jackson happened to be on a certain flight from Florida to Hawaii in 2019, this would be a short story. But he wasn’t, so one noodly friend got go on a long trip.
When a Virginian tourist arrived at his accommodations at a vacation rental, he started unpacking his bags. Suddenly, a tiny newborn snake slithered out of his backpack.
The last time the man had opened his backpack was in Florida. That means the reptile got through airport security checks and the entire eight-hour flight without anyone noticing.
Animal authorities later identified the snake as a Southern black racer, a native Floridian species. The good news is that they’re not venomous, and even if they were, the tiny snake would’ve been completely harmless.
Until it grew up. Snakes have no native predators in Hawaii and a full-grown, six-foot-long racer could’ve wreaked serious havoc on the islands’ ecosystem.
Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources “detained” the snake, according to Local10. We don’t know how long of a sentence it ended up serving.
2) Ni Miao
The snake’s eight-hour flight was long, but it’s got nothing on a certain Chinese kitten. In 2012, a stray kitten got trapped in a cargo container when it was sealed at a Chinese port.
A three-week sea journey later, workers at a Los Angeles port discovered the five-month-old animal barely clinging to life in the container. It couldn’t walk, see, or even meow.
Animal control official Aaron Reyes told Daily Herald that the cat was taking only shallow breaths and, for all reasons and purposes, appeared to be as good as dead. But the little kitten wasn’t about to give up the ghost just yet.
After a stint at a veterinary hospital, he bounced back and make an almost complete recovery. He did suffer serious muscle atrophy due to malnourishment, though, and will probably walk with a noticeable limp for the rest of his life.
The cat, named Ni Hao, has since found an adoptive family.
3) The Lingerie Lizard
Lisa Russell, from Rotherham, England, made a trip to Barbados last year. When she returned home, she unwittingly brought back a small perverted stowaway.
When Russell started emptying her bags, a tiny gecko fell out of her bra. She initially thought it was dead, but then the lizard skittered off looking for another hiding place.
“I thought it was a tiny dead creature and then when it moved I started screaming. It is not what you expect to find in your bra after a 4,000-mile journey!” Russell told Metro.
Animal control officials later picked up the gecko and housed with a reptile specialist. Wonder if he got another bra to snuggle in for his terrarium.
4) A Feathery Intruder
The passengers on a 2018 flight from Bangkok, Thailand, to Doha, Qatar, got a surprise visitor on the plane. Some four hours into the flight, a small bird popped out from the overhead luggage compartments.
When the bird realized it was trapped, it understandably went a bit nuts. It started flapping up and down the aisles, looking for a way out.
Luckily, the panic didn’t spread to the passengers. Some tried catching the bird to keep it from hurting itself or anyone else, while other were content to film its shenanigans on their phones.
“The air hostesses were trying to ignore it, there was no announcement or anything. There was a bit of a commotion when it first appeared but then people just started to get used to it,” Jake Buckingham from London, who was on the plane, told Daily Mail.
After flying around for some two-and-a-half hours, the bird got tired and settled somewhere in the cabin. Buckingham assumed it was later caught or shooed out of plane.
5) Alcoholic Marmots Under the Hood
Sequoia National Park in California is famous for its majestic redwoods — and yellow-bellied marmots. But these rodents aren’t nearly as cowardly as their name might imply, especially when it comes to alcohol.
According to the National Wildlife Federation, the animals have developed a taste for ethylene glycol, an alcohol used in car antifreeze. They’ve chewed through the cables of many cars in the park to access the sweet, sweet poison, much to the annoyance of the vehicles’ owners.
Occasionally, the alcoholic marmots get caught in the cars when they take off. Sometimes they end up traveling extreme distances.
For example, in one case, a marmot hung on to a moving car for nearly 200 miles, traveling from Mineral King in the Sequoia National Park to Santa Monica Mountains.
6) The Pooch in Boots
Jared and Kristi Owens, from Texas, were ready to get on their flight to Las Vegas in October 2021. But when they were checking in their suitcase at Lubbock airport, the employee at the counter told them their bag was five pounds overweight.
The Owens found that strange, since they could’ve sworn they’d packed appropriately. But maybe they’d made a mistake, and they popped the bag open to redistribute its contents.
As soon as they did, though, a small furry face popped out of one of Kristi’s boots. The couple’s chihuahua, Icky, had burrowed into it and they’d closed the bag without realizing the dog was in there.
Coincidentally, Icky weighs five pounds. That’d explain why the bag was overweight.
Luckily enough, the stowaway dog didn’t ruin the Owens vacation. The nice lady at the counter watched after Icky until a relative could come and pick him up.
Jared and Kristi later told KSAT that they’re very thankful neither the airline or the airport accused them of attempting to illegally smuggle an animal onboard.