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| One of the highly suspicious blocks of cacao |
I never thought of myself as a terrorist, never felt like
one or looked like one, never thought I’d be mistaken for one. So, imagine my
surprise when I heard the words “Sir, please come with us.” and found myself escorted in the company of 3 TSA
agents to a back room at the Ft Lauderdale airport. One was carrying a clear
plastic bag containing my shoes, belt and pocket contents. Yes, I was nervous.
In the small back room, I found my backpack inside a steel
box and was asked what I was carrying – clothes and cacao, which none of the
agents had heard of. At that point a supervisor appeared and asked me to open
the bag and remove the contents. With the 10 neat little paper bags of cacao
spread at the bottom of the box, the supervisor repeated the question of
contents – cacao, the stuff you make into chocolate and I offered the
supervisor a smell. This only prompted a request to open one of the bags. With
the dark brown cacao now fully revealed, he finally ventured a cautious sniff
and then requested I open a block, since everyone knows that the best place to
hide a plastic explosive is inside a chocolate flavored shell.
Now, we were joined by yet another agent with a box of
electronic gear, who took little paper test tabs and rubbed them on me and the
cacao. After the device failed to detect any real explosives, the mood lightened
considerably. It seems my cargo had the same electronic scan signature as
plastic explosive and the good TSA folks were just keeping us all safe. The
broken block was left behind, in hopes that some tech person can re-calibrate
the equipment to exclude cacao as a suspect threat. I also discovered that a
good sense of humor is NOT a prerequisite to TSA employment.
And I continued my travels to deliver cacao blocks to
friends and family along my trip.
I should note in fairness to TSA, that I was wearing a bright orange shirt and carrying 20 solid blocks in a small backpack. Highly suspicious, indeed.
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