Free Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase: Hilarious Stories of Air Travel by the World's Favorite Flight Attendant by Betty N. Thesky, Janet Spencer, Nanette Weston Page B

noises too, and we decided the best thing to do at this point was to seal off the bin with tape so nobody would open the bin. I sealed the bin while the purser spoke with the Captain.
    “We agreed the flight wasn’t in any kind of danger, so we decided to proceed to Chicago. When we finally landed, my instructions were to have these passengers remain seated and make sure the bin with the squirrels was not opened while all the other customers deplaned. Then about 15 supervisors and maintenance workers entered the aircraft and approached us. The workers taped up huge plastic tarps which spanned the full distance between the ceiling and the floor all around the bin. When they opened the bin, three of the four flying squirrels were found in the backpack all in good health, but ‘Rocky’ was missing. Apparently it took them five hours to find him, finally locating him in another bin halfway down the aisle. The aircraft’s next flight was cancelled due to the fact that it took them five hours to find the missing squirrel, plus many hours to inspect all the wires and connections for damage from the squirrel.
    “Last thing we heard, the couple was charged with the money the airline lost due to this incident. I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t have been cheaper for them to have chartered a private jet for themselves and their squirrels—or at least to have hired a squirrel sitter and left Rocky and his friends at home.”
     
    A pilot:
    “As I was doing my pre-flight walk-around, checking the plane before takeoff, I noticed a really big animal carrier that was plainly marked in large letters: ‘Do Not Look in the Air Holes.’ Of course, that just made me curious so I had to go look in the air holes. Well, there was a large gorilla in there, which I suppose was being transported to a zoo. And he was staring right back out at me through those air holes. What I didn’t know was that gorillas interpret direct eye contact as aggression.
    Well, everyone else on the tarmac was also reading the signs saying ‘Do Not Look in the Air Holes.’ and then going over to look in the air holes, so there was a steady procession of baggage handlers and maintenance workers staring in at this gorilla. The gorilla started to get really angry, rocking back and forth in his carrier. You just can’t have a moving package on board a plane—especially not one that large. In the end, the gorilla had to be transported by ground, all because of the signs saying ‘Do Not Look in the Air Holes.’”
     
    A flight attendant:
    “I was just out of training and my first assignment was from Boston to San Juan. During the flight several passengers in one center section of seats kept getting dripped on. We all assumed it was condensation from the air conditioning system, so we kept wiping it down and trying to keep it from dripping.
    “When we landed in San Juan, we arrived at the gate and I went to disarm the doors when I heard a fellow flight attendant start to scream, ‘ Rats ! We’ve got rats !’ It turned out that an eccentric woman had placed her two ferrets in an empty overhead bin and they had urinated and defecated all over the bin during our flight. What was dripping on the passengers, and what we were wiping up, was not water, but ferret pee.”
     
    A flight attendant:
    “A passenger named Greg got a call from his wife when he arrived at the airport for his flight. She was worried because she could not find their cat, Joe, anywhere. It was a large white cat and she said, ‘You don’t think he might have jumped in your bag while you were packing, do you?’ He assured her that was impossible. He’d packed a big duffle bag the previous evening and stuffed it in the trunk of his car, where it had been all night long. He hadn’t heard any meowing when he pulled it out or when he checked it. The duffel bag was now in the cargo hold, but he didn’t think Joe the Cat could possibly be in it. But as the flight got underway, he got to