I just bought a fifty-year-old Cuban alligator dressed as a pirate.
This is so not my fault. Victor broke his arm by falling down some stairs in Mexico, so I went with him on a business trip to North Carolina so I could help him. The trip was uneventful, until we stopped at a little shop on the way to the airport. While Victor went to use the restroom, I stumbled upon the small, badly aged baby alligator, which was fully dressed and standing on his hind legs. He was wearing a moth-eaten felt outfit, a beret and a belt. He was missing one hand, and he was nineteen dollars. His tiny belt hung sadly, and I appreciated the irony of an alligator wearing a belt that was not made of alligator. His mouth was open in a wide grin, as if he’d been waiting for me for a very long time. I remembered my vow to not buy any more taxidermied animals and feverishly searched for loopholes while Victor looked through the aisles for me. I contemplated stapling a strap to the alligator’s shoulders, putting my lipstick in his mouth, and calling him an alligator purse, but it was too late. He had me at the beret.
I could hear Victor shuffling around on the other side of the aisle, and I sheepishly poked the tiny alligator over the top. “Hello, mon ami! I am Jean Louise,” I said in a daring French accent. “I have never been on zee plane before and would love an adventure!”
“Oh,” said the confused elderly woman on the other side of the aisle. “Well, good luck to you?”
Victor tapped me on the shoulder and I screamed in surprise, and he looked at me and Jean Louise with disgust. “Don’t judge us,” I said meekly, as I hugged the alligator protectively. “We’re all we have.”
Victor shook his head but said nothing as he silently walked up to the cash register to pay. Jean Louise leaned forward and whispered, “Enabler,” but Victor still held out his credit card to the baffled cashier. Luckily Victor doesn’t speak French.
“I’ll need to make him a tiny hook for his missing hand,” I said as we walked out. He was far too brittle to go in my suitcase, so I put him in my purse, and Victor insisted there was no way they were going to let me get on the plane with a dead alligator. I disagreed, pointing out that he was quite literally “unarmed,” but his tiny gleaming teeth said otherwise, as I remembered the fingernail clippers we’d been forced to throw out at security once before. I turned to the experts (everyone following me on Twitter).
To make a long story short, if you ask people on Twitter whether it’s legal to carry a smallish sort of taxidermied alligator onto a plane with you, most of them will say, “Um, no. You can’t even bring breast milk on a plane.” Then you’ll point out that the alligator is at least fifty years old, is wearing clothes, and is missing a hand, and some of them will change their mind, but most will still say he’ll be considered a weapon. Then you’ll write, “I can’t imagine anyone seriously thinking I’d try to take over a plane using only a tiny clothed alligator as a weapon,” and everyone on Twitter will be like, “Really? Have you met you? Because that totally sounds like something you’d do.” And they had a point.
But I wasn’t truly concerned until we were already in line at security, and then I suddenly wondered whether someone had once used this alligator to smuggle cocaine in fifty years ago but then forgot to take it out, and now I’m gonna get arrested in the airport for alligator-stomach cocaine that’s older than me. I quietly asked Victor whether you could tell if cocaine was expired, or if it just stays fresh forever, and he was all, “CAN WE NOT TALK ABOUT THIS IN SECURITY?” and I was like, “It’s not for me. I’m asking because of the alligator,” and he kind of glared at me. I took a deep breath and calmed myself, imagining myself saying to the security officer, “Oh, this? That’s old cocaine. It probably expired, like, forty years ago. It’s not mine. It’s the alligator’s. I can’t be responsible for the wild lifestyle an alligator had before I was even born. Besides, he doesn’t know your rules. He’s from Cuba.” I felt sure they’d understand. Besides, these are the risks you take when you bring a dead alligator on a plane trip.
Of course, Jean Louise and I got through just fine, and no one even blinked at the alligator on the security conveyor belt. Victor was stopped for a full body search. Probably because he was sweating, and the vein on his forehead was popping out. In the confusion, Jean Louise and I calmly walked through with no problem. Victor could learn a lot from that alligator.
When we finally got settled in I pulled down Victor’s tray table and perched Jean Louise on it so that he could see outside. “Take that goddamn thing off my tray,” Victor whispered between clenched teeth.
“But he’s never been on a plane before,” I explained.
“Voulez-vous les window seat?” Jean Louise asked pleasantly.