Cheetah gets loose on Delta flight

A Delta baggage worker got a bit of a fright when she opened a jetliner's cargo door and found a cheetah running loose amid the luggage.

Delta spokeswoman Betsy Talton said Friday that two cheetahs were being flown in the cargo area of a passenger flight from Portland, Ore., to Atlanta a day earlier when one escaped from its cage.

Talton said the airline summoned help from an Atlanta zoo. Experts rushed to a closed airport hangar and tranquilized both animals and took them back to the zoo...

--MSNBC

Man tries to smuggle 700 snakes on plane

Customs officers at Cairo's airport on Thursday detained a man bound for Saudi Arabia who was trying to smuggle 700 live snakes on a plane, airport authorities said.

The officers were stunned when a passenger, identified as Yahia Rahim Tulba, after being asked to open his carryon bag, told them it contained live snakes.

Tulba opened his bag to show the snakes to the police and asked the officers, who held a safe distance, not to come close. Among the various snakes, hidden in small cloth sacks, were two poisonous cobras...

--USA Today

Runaway mouse delays flight

HANOI (Reuters) - A small white mouse running around a Boeing 777 delayed a Vietnam Airlines flight to Tokyo for more than fours, newspapers reported Monday.

A passenger saw the mouse on the aircraft, which had arrived in Hanoi from the central city of Danang at 10 p.m. Saturday and was scheduled to continue to Japan.

"Technicians were sent to seek and kill the mouse on the Boeing and this task lasted for over four hours," according to one report in the online newspaper VietnamNet www.vnn.vn.

The report and others in state-run newspapers said the passengers went to a hotel and luggage was removed during the search for the mouse...

--Reuters