Woman snagged at airport for packing banana plants in her underwear

I suppose if you’re flying domestically in the U.S. and had three banana plants in your underwear while going through a security check, particularly if you’re female, you’d attract attention. But, after discovering you were packing banana plants and not a pistol, you might be allowed to walk on your merry way.

Although, just how well one could walk is another issue. Seriously, if you had three banana plants in your underwear, could you walk?

In the airport in Sydney, Australia, according to this story published in the Sydney Morning Herald, if you have even one banana plant in your underwear, you’d be in a whole mess of trouble. A whole world of trouble. More trouble than you probably ever imagined.

You’d be in trouble even if the plant was not in your underwear but tucked under your arm like a rolled up newspaper–Or if you were wearing it like a hat.

It’s illegal to bring banana plants into Australia no matter how you are carrying them. Banana plants carry nasty ailments that sound as if they could be sexually transmitted diseases.

“Better not, I have black sigatoka disease,” one might say. Or how about “fusarium wilt?”– or “moko disease?”

The woman apprehended by customs officials at the airport in Australia was trying to smuggle the plants in from Samoa. Although she doesn’t have any funky sounding diseases, she could be looking at 10 years in jail and a $66,000 Australian dollar fine for threating Australia’s banana industry.