poor squirrel

[Guest guest]

HONOLULU, Hawaii (AP) -- An American Airlines flight made an

unscheduled landing after pilots heard something skittering about in

the wire-laden space over the cockpit.

 

The airline blamed the emergency landing of the Tokyo-Dallas flight

with 202 passengers on a stowaway squirrel.

 

" You do not want a varmint up in the wiring areas and what-have-you on

an airplane. You don't want anything up there, " said John Hotard,

spokesman for the Fort Worth, Texas-based airline.

 

He said pilots feared the animal would chew through wiring or cause

other problems.

 

" So, as a precaution, we diverted, " Hotard said.

 

Once on the ground late Friday, the Boeing 777's human passengers were

put up in hotel rooms and later rebooked on other flights.

 

State and federal agriculture and wildlife officials boarded the

plane, set traps and captured the eastern gray squirrel.

 

Hotard said the plane had flown to Tokyo from New York before the

Dallas flight.

 

Honolulu, however, proved to be the squirrel's final destination.

Fearing it might have been carrying rabies, authorities had the rodent

killed.

 

 

" Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies

in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are

cold and are not clothed. "

-- Dwight Eisenhower