Note: Otus is on special assignment, so here's one of his classic columns. It first ran Nov. 20, 2004, and is still apropos.
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Disclaimer: Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of 👉 humorous fabrication 👈 appears every Saturday.
You may think it's adorable that Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field now has a Pooch Patrol out in the parking lots, but it's all for show. The real work is behind the scenes.
The bomb-sniffing dogs, mostly Labs and springer spaniels with the occasional Pomeranian, are friendly and photogenic and seemingly a real public relations coup.
The dogs may be wagging their tails, but if you have the whiff of high explosives about you, they'll quickly turn into Cujo.
They're trained to sniff out nitroglycerin, RDX, TNT, PETN and pentolite. They'll alert on plasticizers (including C-4), nomex, gortex, potassium chlorate, fulminates, myrol and urea distillates. They'll even turn cartwheels over a couple of firecrackers.
It could get ugly. Try removing a Shih Tzu once it has a lock on your larynx.
At the cost of $817,600 a year, the canines had better be more than cute and cuddly.
But many feel this is the best investment the city has made since it bought Fern the Border Collie to hector the Canada geese at Rebsamen Park Golf Course.
Sure, Fern cost $38,000, but that's about the same expense to replace four Champion Bermuda greens. A gaggle of bug-hunting honkers can peck a green into oblivion in about two hours.
And that's not to mention the tons of goose poop they leave behind. Golf carts have been known to skid on that stuff and careen into the river.
In fact, the course's signature hole, the stunning 376-yard par 4 No. 13, became such a hazard before Fern arrived that barrier nets had to be installed along the riverbank.
Fern may have been expensive, but you'll notice that not a single Canada goose remains on the south side of the river. They've all flown over to Burns Park and Cook's Landing in North Little Rock.
Mayor Pat Hays welcomed the birds with open arms and made them "Honorary Ambassadors of North Little Rock."
Airport officials hope that their bomb-sniffing dogs will have a similar effect. Not that explosive-toting terrorists will go over to the North Little Rock Airport, but that the patrol pups will nip any potential problems in the bud. Or someplace more painful.
The dogs are replacing the mostly bored-looking batch of booth bunnies who've been glancing at your trunk and waving you into short-term parking for years. There was no sniffing under the car by those folks.
But at least those security guards were human beings -- real people with rent to pay and food to buy. I don't know how much they were getting to man the booths, but the dogs are being paid $5 an hour to nose around.
Airport honchos called it "a heck of a deal." Tell that to the fellow whose job was taken by an employee who works for kibble.
Still, as much publicity as the dogs got last week, they are only the tip of the iceberg. There's another, more important part of the program that's being kept hush-hush. Why? Because, frankly, it stinks.
Back in the cavernous luggage containment area are 17 highly trained bomb-sniffing ferrets that will olfactorily inspect each and every piece of luggage before it's loaded onto a plane.
If the critters freeze and alert, the luggage will be opened and the ferrets allowed to roll on the contents. That's what they do.
Wrangling this bunch of stoats is Wendy "Wild Weasel" Wojokowski, who notes the ferrets have one major liability -- their musky odor stinks all the way to Montana.
"They seem to alert a lot on underarm deodorant," Wojokowski said. "It has something to do with their own pungent odor and human hyperhidrosis. They especially will alert on Secret Wide Solid Powder and Mennen Speed Stick."
Wojokowski says that if you get to your destination, open your luggage and detect the bracing aroma of ferret, you can rest assured that your luggage was checked by the finest bomb-sniffers in the business.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that ferrets also alert on those little shampoo bottles they give you at Holiday Inn Express. You've been warned.
Disclaimer
Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of humorous fabrication
appears every Saturday. Email:
HomeStyle on 07/16/2016