Mystery at 36,000 feet

Traveling on budget airlines requires fortitude and flexibility. One might be delayed for hours on the tarmac in a seat built to accommodate a Victorian waif. One might be seated behind a serial farter, or next to a lady eating the tuna and onion in garlic oil sandwich she brought from home. Anything’s possible.

On our recent flight from San Francisco I was on the aisle with Sam next to me in the center. The plane was almost full when a disheveled guy holding an oversize duffel bag lurched toward us and jerked his head toward the empty window seat.

I was bummed. He didn’t smell great, to be honest, and he was shaky, like the meth addicts on Intervention. But it wasn’t like we had a choice. We got up and he shimmied in, stuffing the duffel under the seat in front of him.

We had just reached cruising altitude when we heard frantic barking. The guy leaned down and yelled at the bag. “Shut up,” he said. Then, he reached for his phone to watch a chaotic action movie at full volume without earbuds.

Sam and I exchanged glances. This couldn’t be legal. Should we alert the flight crew? Collectively, they seemed a cranky bunch who might punish snitches. So, we minded our own beeswax, which for me was my nose in a book while Sam took on a crossword puzzle, soundtracked by bursts of neighboring gunfire. For the remainder of the flight I fretted about the dog in the bag, now wedged between the guy’s greasy cargo-pantsed calves.

When the plane landed, the mystery was solved. Come to find out I was wrong about it being a dog. It was two dogs, small poodles of some sort, which the guy extricated and set on his lap. “They have to go potty,” he announced, and no fools, we let him out ahead of us.

For every nightmare story involving air travel ending in emergency landings or duct tape restraints, there are hundreds of minor tales like this; reminders that we humans are just two dogs in a duffel bag away from and you thought you’d seen everything.