A missile launcher.
The TSA said it found the weapon in a man’s checked luggage at Baltimore-Washington International Airport around 5:45 a.m. Monday.
The man, whom the TSA did not name, told the authorities that he was an active member of the military and wanted to take the missile launcher home with him to Jacksonville, Texas, as a souvenir from Kuwait.
How he even got it to BWI is not clear (as is how he acquired such unusual taste in memorabilia).
Yet the TSA said the weapon, which was “inert,” was quickly confiscated and turned over to the Maryland fire marshal for “safe disposal.” The man was then allowed to catch his flight.
“Perhaps he should have picked up a keychain instead!” Lisa Farbstein, a TSA spokeswoman, said on Twitter, sharing a photo of the gray, cylindrical object lying on top of a pile of clothes, including what appear to be military fatigues.
The TSA did not answer whether this was the first missile launcher it had ever confiscated.
But it is not out of the ordinary for the agency to publicize unusual items that it finds.
The TSA’s Instagram account has close to 1 million followers. Some of the discoveries the agency has shared there include snakes concealed in computer hard drives, bricks of marijuana hidden in Christmas wrapping and replicas of Freddy Krueger’s bladed gloves.
Some confiscated items seem, on their face, benign. In 2012, the TSA barred a woman from taking a cupcake onto a plane, explaining that the cupcake was packed in a jar filled with icing and that the icing exceeded the amount of gel allowed in carry-on luggage.
Other items are more obviously dangerous. Every year, the TSA finds and confiscates thousands of guns — sometimes loaded — at airport security or in checked luggage.
Not everything is caught. In January, a Delta Air Lines passenger carried, by accident, a loaded gun through airport security at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. The passenger later discovered the firearm and alerted the authorities.
Not everything that is found needs to be confiscated. In June 2017, the TSA shared on its Twitter page a photo of a live, 20-pound Atlantic lobster a passenger took through security at Boston Logan International Airport.
It was unclear what became of the missile launcher. The Maryland state fire marshal did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday evening asking about its fate.
The episode, however, allowed the TSA to offer a reminder, for those who needed one: Don’t try to take a military weapon onto an airplane.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.