911 caused many changes in our world – good and bad.  One of the easiest to notice is how Air Travel Was Transformed. We now go through an intricate process at the airport.  Obviously from what happened on that day and the list I  am about to share with you.  It is a necessary thing.  It hopefully protects us from evil but also from stupid.

Weird things confiscated by the TSA (checked luggage and carry-ons) – guns, knives, swords and even a baby shark.  Concealed knives and guns (just cause it looks like something else…) corkscrews, cane sword, sumari swords, machete, throwing knives

Most of the time it is things you did not realize you had or weren’t allowed.  I was stopped from bringing an orange. – who knew (and if I wanted to hurry and eat it I then was going to need to get out of line, eat it and then go through the security check again)

A cat Yes, in their checked luggage. In 2018. TSA officers found a live six-month-old cat in a passenger’s checked bag. They rescued the cat. Since the cat’s owners had packed her inside their checked bag on purpose, she was removed from their custody.

Flares: In case of a crash? Or maybe they wanted to use them if the call button stopped working? Either way, they were confiscated. And just so you know: Flares aren’t allowed in carry-on bags, nor are they allowed in checked bags. 

Fake IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) We all know you can’t bring bombs onto a plane, but you may not know that you can’t bring fake bombs either. But one looked so real that Newark TSA agents reacted by closing six checkpoint lanes. The man carrying the IED in his bag said he was going to Florida to train in X-ray detection of explosive devices. 

You can bring… Moose poop

Some really strange things are allowed through airport security, and apparently, that includes moose nuggets (aka moose poop). In 2019, a man had an entire bag of it tucked into his carry-on bag, according to the New York Post. Why? He was planning to bring it to politicians whose policies he disagreed with. The TSA discovered his stash, but since they technically weren’t not allowed, the man was allowed to continue along his merry (and stinky) way.