An elderly Chinese couple was caught carrying a bag full of hundreds of cockroaches, which were meant to be used for a skin treatment, at Guangdong's Baiyun International Airport, a Beijing news site reported.
Of all things to find in someone’s hand luggage at the security check point at an airport, one would probably not expect to find live cockroaches – and that too 200 of them – moving around in a plastic bag. But that was exactly what the customs officials at Guangdong’s Baiyun International Airport on November 25 came across while checking the hand-luggage of an elderly couple.
“There was a white plastic bag with lots of black items moving inside,” security guard Xu Yuyu told Kankan News, according to BBC.com. “One of the staff opened their luggage and a roach crawled out of it. She almost cried,” Xu added.
The offials enquired about the reason for carrying across the creepy crawlies, the husband said that the roaches were part of a skin treatment for his wife. “He said they were part of an old folk remedy. You’d mix the roaches into some medicinal cream and put it on your skin,” Beijing Youth Daily quoted the man.
Once told that living organisms such as insects are not permitted onboard a flight, the couple abandoned the hundreds of cockroaches right there and left them with the officials. It’s not known what happened to them thereafter.
This wasn’t the first time someone has tried to carry something weird on-board. Back in 2011, a passenger was caught trying to carry around 240 fish of different varieties at the Los Angeles airport. The next year, in 2012, reports emerged of an Egyptian couple that tried to smuggle their young boy at the Sharjan airport in a carry-on bag because he was denied a visa.