Most people who have travelled by plane have experienced delays or cancellations that were beyond their control. Very often this was due to problems with the aircraft or the staff.
The last thing you’d expect to ground an airplane would be hundreds of hamsters escaping into the plane, but that’s exactly what happened to one pilot.
Cargo pilot Robert shared a resurfaced clip from a 2017 flight he was supposed to be piloting, but which was cancelled because countless cuddly rodents had broken out of their cages and taken over the plane. “We got to the plane and then chaos just happened. It was immediately clear that this plane was not going anywhere,” he said Newsweek.
In the video, which he shared on July 23 on his TikTok account @CargoPilot747, he showed the stacked cages on the plane, many filled with hamsters, but many not. Many of the animals had staged a “hamster prison break,” crawling around on the floor and climbing between the cages.
TikTok @Cargopilot747
Robert captioned the video: “Cargo plane grounded due to hamsters. This plane isn’t going anywhere.” And as he raced toward a small white hamster that had found a hiding place, he added: “Hello!”
In a caption, he wrote: “The hamsters broke out and brought the Boeing AOG (aircraft to the ground).”
Robert told Newsweek that the cargo flight did not take off that day and when it arrived, “there was already maintenance going on on it, so we all flew back home.”
Since the plane wasn’t flying, he had no log of the flight or knowledge of where it was supposed to go, but when he rediscovered his seven-year-old clip, he knew he had to share it on TikTok.
And it enjoyed huge popularity on the app: it received over 33,000 likes and more than 610,000 views, and hundreds of people left comments. One of them asked in all caps: “Who in their right mind gave them wooden cases?!”
Another joked that it was a “cute and kid-friendly version of Snakes on an Airplane,” referring to the 2006 horror cult classic starring Samuel L. Jackson.
“Was it on its way to Hamsterdam?” posted a third. And one asked the burning question: “How many escaped?” to which Robert replied: “A few hundred.”
TikTok @cargopilot747
According to National Geographic, hamsters can still be found in the wild in parts of Europe and Asia, but in the United States they are popular pets, usually kept in cages and allowed to play outside under supervision.
Hamsters’ teeth grow constantly and they need a lot of gnawing. Their powerful teeth can easily gnaw through wood. According to the Humane Society, some of the very first hamsters kept in captivity actually escaped by gnawing through their crates.
The Humane Society describes the animals as escape artists who must be closely supervised when they are allowed out of their enclosure.
Do you have funny and cute videos or pictures of your pet that you want to share? Send them to [email protected] with some details about your best friend and they could appear on our Pet of the Week list.
