NEW YORK - A man smuggled a monkey onto an airplane Tuesday, stashing the furry fist-size primate under his hat until passengers spotted it perched on his ponytail, an airline official said.

The monkey escapade began in Lima, Peru, late Monday, when the man boarded a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Alison Russell. After landing Tuesday morning, the man waited several hours before catching a connecting flight to LaGuardia Airport.

During the flight, people around the man noticed that the marmoset, which normally lives in forests and eats fruit and insects, had emerged from underneath his hat, Russell said.

“Other passengers asked the man if he knew he had a monkey on him,” she said.

The monkey spent the remainder of the flight in the man’s seat and behaved well, said Russell, who didn’t know how it skirted customs and security.

‘Spirit’
Airport police were waiting for the man and his monkey when the plane landed about 3 p.m., and the man was taken away for questioning. It was unclear whether he would face any criminal charges.

The city’s animal control agency said the monkey appeared healthy. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was planning to take it for disease testing and keep it quarantined for 31 days, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

If the monkey is healthy, it could wind up in a zoo.

“It is kind of a spirited monkey,” Russell said. “That will be the nickname of the monkey: Spirit.”

Great story. I love the idea of it 'perching' on his ponytail!

For some reason when I think of a monkey I always picture it with a baseball bat in its hands.

For sheer balls, this guy's got that beat. From AP via YAHOO

Man tries to take crocs, snakes on plane

CAIRO, Egypt - It was very nearly a real-life version of "Snakes on a Plane." A man was stopped at Cairo's airport just moments before he boarded a Saudi Arabia-bound plane with carry-on bags filled with live snakes, as well as a few baby crocodiles and chameleons.
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Security officials became suspicious of the 22-year-old Saudi man's bags when the X-ray machine at the departure gate gave odd readings. Police said they opened the bags and found a large number of reptiles, including at least one cobra, squirming to escape.

The animals were confiscated and turned over to the Cairo Zoo and the man was allowed to board his flight home.

Transporting live reptiles out of the country is illegal in Egypt, but the passenger said he was unaware of the ban and that the snakes, crocodiles and chameleons were needed by a Saudi university for scientific experiments, police said.

In May, another Saudi man was caught at the Cairo airport carrying 700 live snakes in his carry-on luggage. He told authorities that snakes were often kept in Saudi Arabia by storekeepers in glass jars or used as pets.

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Crazy fucking Arabs...