A TAP Air Portugal flight was grounded at Ponta Delgada Airport in the Azores for four days after 132 hamsters escaped from their transport cages in the plane’s cargo hold. With all the time it’s taken to sort out the issue, you’d think the hamsters were armed and had taken hostages, but no, the issue is actually much sillier than that. The hamsters are very small, you see, and have infested every part of the plane.
If you’re wondering what maniac was transporting 132 hamsters, it’s because the flight was being used as kind of a Noah’s Ark, in a sense. It was transporting not just 132 hamsters but several different types of animals, like ferrets, and birds as the animals were cargo intended for a pet store in the Azores. It wasn’t a normal passenger flight where somebody had 132 hamsters in a suitcase that chewed their way out
That’s not to say that the hamster didn’t chew their way out of their enclosure, because that’s exactly what they did. The baggage handlers noticed that the hamsters’ cages contained a severe lack of hamsters. Upon inspection, they saw that the hamsters somehow chewed through these cages, allowing them to slip out and scatter among the Airbus A320’s cargo hold. If they could chew through their cages, they could probably chew through vital playing components and electrical wiring. So, the airport decided to ground the aircraft just in case the hamsters chewed through, say, some vital engine wiring or cut the breaks.
The next four days were spent with maintenance crews searching every tiny square inch of the plane to find the escaped hamsters. This was apparently next to impossible since the hamsters were so small and nimble that they could fit pretty much anywhere. It took nearly a week, but all 132 hamsters were eventually found. The plane was cleared for takeoff and returned to Lisbon, hamster-free.
Culled from Vice
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