Jill Pertler has been writing professionally for over 20 years. In addition to business writing and work with individuals, she has had articles published in local, regional and national magazines.
Her syndicated column, Slices of Life, is distributed weekly to newspapers throughout the upper midwest.
Innocent family mistaken for drug smugglers
by hungry beagle
By: Jill Pertler
His name was Dudley, and he looked like an unassuming beagle, until he stopped dead in his tracks and focused all of his olfactory attention on our rolling backpack.
We were in Dallas, Texas on a flight layover returning from Mexico. Dudley was a drug detection dog, and his stance told everyone nearby that the front pocket of our backpack smelled very, very interesting.
We were a family of six – dad, mom and four kids – weary and a little disheveled from a day of traveling, but hardly resembling your typical drug-smuggling cartel.
Apparently Dudley disagreed. The kids thought the dog was cute, and the situation funny.
So did I, at first. But when Dudley’s handler tried to move forward, Dudley wouldn’t budge. He was cemented to the ground in front of our backpack, his snout pointed confidently toward our carry-on.
“What’s in there?” the handler inquired.
We all believed the pocket was empty. “Nothing,” we replied with as much innocence as we could muster.
“Open it up,” Mr. Handler ordered.
My husband loosened the flap, put his hand in and pulled out…a cookie. It was a (forgotten) leftover from a snack we’d been served on the plane.
“I was saving that!” our six-year-old cried out.
Dudley was obviously interested in the cookie. His handler was obviously disappointed in Dudley’s performance, “You’re supposed to ignore cookies, Dudley,” he scolded. “Anything else in the bag?” he asked.
“No!” we all shook our heads vigorously.
The handler smiled. Surely he could tell we weren’t drug smugglers. Then he asked for our customs declaration form, the document telling what items we’d purchased in Mexico and were bringing back to the United States. I pulled out the paper where I’d carefully listed our trip souvenirs: “vanilla,” “glow-in-the-dark scorpion necklaces,” “T-shirts” and “chocolate.” No drugs, not even a bottle of tequila. He must have seen that we are a wholesome bunch.
He took the form, and with a yellow marker wrote, “AK9” in large letters over my list. It seemed cryptic, but I figured K9 was code for canine – a fancy word for dog. His message had something to do with the fact that we’d caught Dudley’s attention, and that couldn’t be a good thing.
Our Dudley delay allowed the rest of the passengers from our plane to get ahead of us in line. Travelers from about 20 other airplanes joined them. Rows of people streamed back and forth and back and forth, filling an enormous space. There were many check-through stations at one end of the room. But like the supermarket on a busy Saturday, only two were open. We were last in line.
We waited… and waited.
“How long is infinity?” our six year old asked.
“I think this is it,” my husband answered grimly.
We inched our way forward with the rest of the crowd, and finally found ourselves face to face with a customs official. He asked to see our paperwork, and I had a sudden and inexplicable fear that we’d be caught red-handed, even though we hadn’t done anything wrong. As I passed him the form with the big AK9 written on it, I knew he could read the guilt on my face.
“Are you bringing any animals, food or produce into the country?” he asked.
I looked at him with wide eyes. My tongue froze up and I knew we’d be arrested in no time.
“No, none of that stuff,” my husband interjected, pushing me along.
We weren’t done yet. Most people were free to go after talking with the customs official, but they didn’t have AK9 written on their form. We got to go into a special room with lots of x-ray machines and drug detection devices. Once again, they were interested in our backpack.
We told them that Dudley had smelled our cookie.
“Dudley doesn’t detect cookies,” they said confidently. “He only finds illegal substances.”
I didn’t agree, but wasn’t about to argue with people who could keep me from entering my own country.
Then they asked about fruit. It seems that it is illegal to bring fruit back from Mexico. My ever-astute husband saw a crack in the customs gates and made his way to it.
“We might have used the backpack to carry bananas to the beach,” he offered.
I didn’t remember ever using the pack to haul bananas, and gave him a puzzled look. He shot back with a “Be quiet and I’ll get us out of here” stare. The banana theory was a good one. Dudley wouldn’t eat a cookie, but apparently he was interested in bananas.
We were finally cleared through customs and free to board the plane for Minneapolis. We made our way to our gate and were in the air in no time. The whole customs debacle caused such a delay that we didn’t have time to grab something to eat in the airport. Luckily, they were serving snacks on the plane. The menu? Sandwich and a cookie.
END.
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