Flying With A Large Cucumber

"Ma'am, we're going to have to do a manual inspection of your bag."

"Okay."

"Is there anything dangerous that could poke me in your bag?"

"Just a cucumber."

The TSA inspector narrowed his eyes at me, like he thought I was kidding.  What, like he hasn't seen someone fly with a cucumber before?

Yesterday, one of my co-workers brought in these cucumbers that she grew in her home garden in Denton, Texas. I've seen cucumbers bigger than these in length before, but certainly not ones with such... girth.  I guess it's true that everything is bigger in Texas.  I won't get into the details about all the vegetable porn references that were insinuated during our group excitement of measuring and photographing.  Totally workplace inappropriate.

12-inch ruler and pad of paper for size comparison 

Another co-worker took the bigger one and I got to keep the smaller one.  The smaller one is about 10.5 inches long, 9 inches around, and weighs in at just under 2 lbs.

Every Friday after work, I fly back home to Indiana, so this cucumber had to fly home with me.  Since I didn't check any luggage, I stuffed this cucumber in my travel purse.  And they flagged me for manual screening because "something" didn't look quite right on the airport security X-ray machine.  I suppose they couldn't tell that it was a large cucumber in the bottom of my purse.  Maybe it looked like something else. Like... a large zucchini?

Anyway, the TSA inspector carefully took everything out of my purse, one by one, and finally got to the cucumber.

"I told you I had a cucumber in there."

"Um... yep.  That's a cucumber alright."

"Is it okay if I fly with it?"

"You sure can.  You're all clear, ma'am.  Have a safe flight."

So I traveled home safely with my TSA-approved cucumber.

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