Canine curiosity gets a little personal

To increase airport security, TSA agents are implementing new safety measures, such as not letting anyone actually get onto the plane, except pilots, and making all the passengers walk to their destination.


Okay, maybe this hasn't happened yet, but it can't be far away.


An actual safety measure that we encountered recently was a random search of carry-on luggage at the gate. The TSA persons set up a little search station, right there as we were boarding, and randomly chose passengers to step out of line and have their luggage searched. For reasons best known to themselves, five persons were needed to carry out this search. One person conducted the search, while the other four stood around offering support, such as frowning.

The mathematically inclined Hero noted that the search was not random at all. "If it was really random, they would have picked two people in a row occasionally. But they didn't."


This seemed to concern the passenger in front of us, who wanted to believe that the search was entirely random, because if mathematical principles of randomness were not being followed, who knew what kind of trouble we might be in.


One passenger carried a small dog, who felt that he must do his part for American security by personally search every passenger before boarding. This was accomplished with great enthusiasm by jumping on the passengers, sniffing them, licking their face, knocking them over if they were more or less his size, etc. Before we had even gotten in line, I had seen him diligently conduct a search of the ladies' restroom floor in the terminal, just in case there were traces of prohibited substances on it, such as month-old food particles.


During his search of the restroom floor, I had been in a stall minding my own business -- I must stress this point -- when a brown shaggy head suddenly wriggled under the partition, bent on entering my stall to continue his search. When one is in such a position, one has few resources with which to combat an intrusion. I therefore gently stuck my foot under the dog's chin while saying, with extreme ineffectiveness, "No, no. No, no."


When it looked as if I would have to take more drastic measures -- arming myself with toilet paper to ward off a kissing attack? -- the dog's owner must have realized his intent, and the dog was abruptly whisked back into his own stall. This did not deter him, however. Two more times he attempted to wriggle under the partition, and two more times he was snatched back. 


I reported this invasion of privacy to the Hero, who, though appropriately indignant on my behalf, was glad that the dog's owner was a woman and therefore had not used the men's restroom. He wondered if the TSA agents would search the dog.

"If they knew where he'd just been," I said, "they definitely wouldn't."