From dead bodies in the security line to a cobra in a Pringles can, you wouldn’t believe the crazy things that happen at America’s busiest airport of origin.

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The airport of your imagination probably looks like the one in Love Actually: a haven of happy tears where adventures begin and families reunite. In real life, airports are upside-down worlds where it’s perfectly acceptable to wear pajamas in public, guzzle martinis at 8:15 a.m., and ignore all etiquette around lining up.

All this informed the 2004 NBC television drama LAX, starring Heather Locklear as a superwoman managing the airport’s 55,000 workers and 240,000 daily passengers. The show was canceled after one season; apparently America didn’t think its busiest airport of origin was interesting.

They were wrong. According to James Janovec, the superintendent of operations on whom Locklear’s character was loosely based, a plane takes off roughly every 50 seconds at LAX. The facility has more TSA agents than anywhere else, screening 100 passengers a minute in the busiest weeks.

So when LAX offered me the opportunity to work with its TSA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) teams—and a look at its other operations—I couldn’t say no. From finding snakes in Pringles cans to providing security checks for a robot with a passport, here’s everything I learned while working at this hive of high-flying madness.

There are social tiers in the lounge

“You can always tell when it’s a customer’s first time in the lounge, because, without fail, they do a full lap and a half to scout out the best seats,” says Anastasia Jenkins, who’s managed the Star Alliance Lounge at Los Angeles International Airport since it opened in 2013. Each day, she hosts about 1,800 international travelers, who wait an average of two hours for their flight while sipping complimentary sparkling wine (116,000 bottles worth in 2018).

A little-known fact? Airport lounge food changes depending on the next departure. When Asiana flights were on deck, I added instant noodles to a buffet already stocked with the fresh kind; for Lufthansa and Air New Zealand departures, I carted out extra handles of alcohol.

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Of course there are celebrities, who have demands. Every time a certain action star is back, the team knows he won’t leave until he’s eaten three specially prepared hamburgers. A former Charlie’s Angel used to get so cranky waiting for her Red Bull, it’s now always available where she can grab it. Most—but not all—of these requests are catered to within private rooms nested like Russian dolls inside the lounges.

There are exceptions. The smiley-but-sedated rock legend who always complains about the size of airplane mugs enjoys hollering at his also-famous wife across the buffet. (Employees keep extra-large ceramic cups just for him to take on his flight.) And one older Oscar winner is the lounge hero when he passes through during the holidays, handing out Christmas gifts like Santa Claus.

Illustration: Jaci Kessler Lubliner

Real stars go to the private terminal

The most VIP way through LAX isn’t at LAX at all, but via a separate terminal on the far side of the runway. The Private Suite is a members-only club that costs $4,500 per year, plus a minimum of $2,700 per flight. (An offshoot is in the works at JFK.) If that’s your thing, it’s a good deal: Each stay includes $2,000 in minibar amenities, plus massages, manicures, haircuts, and car service straight to the aircraft. And yet, the average member spends one measly hour in their personal suite.

That’s because the biggest value proposition is time saved—security here is a car-door-to-plane-door affair, much like flying private. And since the whole operation is pre-TSA, passengers can get delivery service from Nobu or a one-on-one session with their personal tailor.

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So who buys in? About 50% of the members are business execs; the others are celebs escaping the paparazzi. Meghan Markle’s mom used the facility en route to the royal wedding, and Jamie Foxx is a fan, too.

Security training is no joke

To understand the barely contained pandemonium that exists on a daily basis at LAX, take a deeper look at the numbers. In 2018 almost 42 million people were screened by the TSA team, outpacing the country’s next busiest, JFK, by 8.6 million travelers. The airport sees about 120,000 departing passengers and more than 100,000 checked bags every day. The third week of June broke LAX’s traffic records, with almost 950,000 travelers departing in seven days.

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Processing that many people requires immense training. The airport’s 2,700 screening agents cut their teeth in noncertified positions first: checking IDs or serving as divestiture officers (the person yelling, “Laptops out, shoes off!”). Once they’ve shown their stuff, employees get a two-month advanced education, which includes a two-week course on X-ray technology and mastering proper pat-downs.

Illustration: Jaci Kessler Lubliner

You may not need a heartbeat to get on a plane

“I truly thought I had seen it all until I got a call that there was a person who had seemingly passed away while waiting to clear security,” says Keith Jeffries, LAX’s federal security director. In actuality, the old man had died earlier, and his family bought him a plane ticket, strapped him into a wheelchair, and tried to sneak him back to his native Mexico for burial. Turns out, it’s not as unusual as it sounds—a one-way flight can be substantially cheaper than shipping a corpse. But these cases don’t make it to the gate; ultimately, they get processed by the LAPD and turned over to the county coroner.

One nonliving passenger did make it through security—with everyone’s approval. In December 2014, LAX was the first airport to have a humanoid robot come through. “Athena” had a ticket to Frankfurt, two human escorts, and a proper German passport. And in case you’re wondering, she sat in premium economy, though her functions were turned off during flight. (She didn’t have an airplane mode, apparently.)

Where do they take your banned stuff?

If you’ve ever had precious cargo seized for being 0.1 ounce over the liquid limit, you’ve paid for it not just in lost shampoo (or drinks, or jam) but in taxpayer dollars, too. “It costs money to store, then throw away every surrendered item,” says one of my TSA colleagues. “We can’t take for granted that there’s actually water in each plastic bottle, so we have to dispose of each as though it could be lethal.” Gels and aerosols cost even more, as they have to be discarded at a special hazardous waste site. It all adds up to a $9 million bill each year.

All that’s to say: No, I wasn’t secretly enjoying your forbidden stash with my TSA colleagues. Especially when it comes to “metals and sharps”—a self-explanatory category of banned goods. Most agents report confiscating three to five of these items during the typical eight-hour shift, and I saw 40 knives in my first hour. One switchblade had been hiding in a hollowed-out hole between the pages of a Jodi Picoult novel—unfortunately not Handle With Care. I also caused a passenger to throw a fit at me by confiscating her juicing blender for its rotating blade. So L.A.!

An additional 1,000 items are logged and coded daily at the 5,000-square-foot lost-and-found warehouse a mile from the terminals. Perishables are steam-incinerated, and everything else is sorted according to value. After 90 days, unclaimed items are sold at auction, with proceeds benefiting a Los Angeles municipal coffer.

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Unsurprisingly, this translates to a lot of watches, belts, and jackets—things you can easily forget in a TSA bin. But I was thrown for a loop when I processed a single shoe: Did someone board their flight wearing just one Nike? Crazier still, Captain Michael Scolaro of the LAXPD, who heads the facility, estimates that 70 people a day lose a computer, adding up to 6,000 laptops and tablets in the holding center at any given time.

Then there’s the oversize collateral, which you’d think would be impossible to misplace. On the shelves during my shift: surfboards, bongo drums, a giant stuffed carnival bear, a sleep apnea machine, a heart monitor, and my favorite—a chainsaw. (A jaunty logging holiday, perhaps?) And more than 1,000 suitcases; luggage is often left, fully packed, in odd corners such as bathrooms.

Illustration: Jaci Kessler Lubliner

A birthday card can cause a bomb scare

Different airports have different causes for alarm—literally. In Texas and Arizona, guns are a common high-level offense. Not so in California, where major alarms are more frequently set off by innocuous items. “You should see what a music-playing greeting card looks like on our scanners!” says Jeffries, noting that his team of explosives specialists had roughly 3,000 calls about potential hazards in the first half of the year. That includes everything from fireworks to inert grenades.

One way to catch these crises is a passenger-sniffing dog—of which there are 400 nationwide. These canines, selected for their sociability and ability to detect contraband, go through 12 weeks of rigorous military-grade training before being classified as “national assets.” They can identify hundreds of explosive materials simply by smell.

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Many people imagine German shepherds to be the ideal undercover dog, but the trend has moved toward floppy-eared breeds, which look less menacing and use subtle body language rather than snarls to communicate a threat. This way, when a suspicious scent is detected, handlers can mobilize a response without raising the suspicions of a potentially dangerous traveler.

Decoys are frequently marched through the airport to keep dogs on their paws and ensure they continue to get rewarded for sniffing explosives. Since handlers are required to keep emotional distance from the animals, the canines’ only prizes are simple squeaky balls or plastic bones—no belly rubs or snuggles. (They do pick out their own toys though, usually as part of a “bomb school” graduation ritual.)

Here’s why water costs $6

What do you do while waiting to board? At LAX, that’s an $814 million-a-year question. Retail sales and duty-free pulled in $205 million and $234 million in the past 12 months, respectively, but food and beverage is the big earner, with $375 million in sales. LAX has a steeper markup than most U.S. airports—about 18% above typical retail pricing. (PDX in Portland, Ore., is the lowest at 0%.)

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At least some of that inflation is due to the high costs of operating in an airport. Consider the limited storage space and that all goods need to fit through security, which means retailers can’t buy in bulk. Add the high cost of labor—airport employees get compensated for parking, as well as a daily hour of extra commuting time I personally endured to and from the off-site employee lot—and the $6 bottle of water starts to make more sense. But even with all those added costs, most franchises report that their LAX outposts are their brand’s most profitable locations.

Turns out, even with steep price tags, people like to eat when they’re bored. That’s why Panda Express sells more than 120,000 pounds of orange chicken a year, and California Pizza Kitchen slings 244,000 pies.

Illustration: Jaci Kessler Lubliner

They screen you 20 times before customs

Of the 34,000 travelers who touch down daily at LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal, about 500 get selected for secondary screenings by CBP, and two or three get sent back to whence they came. But those are just averages. During my shift with immigration, I counted three individuals waiting in a holding area reminiscent of a dentist’s office.

Why so few detainees, given the current political climate? Computers do most of the work far before you arrive—starting from the minute you book your ticket. By the time you walk through the arrivals hall, your profile has been crosschecked 20 different ways, first via a risk-assessment algorithm and then against watchlists maintained by numerous government organizations.

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That said, about 1.5% of all arriving passengers are breaking the law when they land—just not in a way that’ll get them expatriated. Usually they’re carrying a banned item, knowingly or not. The prosciutto you bought in Italy? Yeah, that’s not allowed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The foie gras from France? Nope, not that either.

Exotic foods aren’t the only contraband

CBP’s main goal isn’t to deny your indulgence but to keep out invasive species, such as the citrus canker that threatens Florida’s orange industry.

Some prohibited items can be anticipated based on origin: When African flights land via Heathrow, the team sees an influx of produce packed in soil—usually plants people intend to re-pot in their stateside homes and gardens. Russians bring in outlawed beluga caviar. Asian inbounds are when agents really start to grit their teeth. Banned pangolin scales, bear gall bladders, deer horns: Seemingly every exotic animal has a medicinal or aphrodisiac body part.

Michael Ferguson, who oversees the team’s agriculture division, didn’t even bat an eye at what I found—elk genitals packed in a handsome wooden box worth about $500. Apparently, this is common. Less ordinary was the tiger penis worth more than $100,000 that he discovered last year.

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Live creatures regularly come through too, and rare animal trafficking is a major federal offense with penalties of up to 20 years in prison. On Ferguson’s very first day, a passenger from East Africa opened her suitcase to reveal rotting dried fish covered in hundreds of tse tse larvae. When they jumped out and clung to Ferguson’s vest, the flustered woman reached across the counter and started eating them off his uniform. Then there was the Vietnamese man who tried strutting through security with 84 songbirds taped to his body. He’d put elastic bands around their beaks, squeezed them in toilet paper tubes and strapped the tubes to his legs under a pair of baggy sweatpants. When questioned, he explained that he was entering them in a stateside singing competition.

Finding contraband at the offsite USPS mail facility was truly bizarre: In one day, I found pinky-nail-size baggies of drugs wedged into the cylinders of working pens, sewn into the hem of a baby’s bib, and stuffed into a speaker where the wiring should have been. Most of this had been ordered by Americans from overseas. Even more disturbing were tools for potential terrorism, such as cell phone signal jammers.

Some contraband can be smelled if not seen. Shark fins, swallows’ nests, grapevine clippings, elephant feet, dried bats, monkey skulls, even a mummified human hand—they’ve all come through the facility. And if you’re an optimist like me, wondering if they’re all bound for a museum or university, you’ll be disappointed to learn that they most definitely weren’t. (Research materials travel with special government-issued permits.)

One time, the team popped a can of Pringles and found a live cobra. The snake now lives at the San Diego Zoo.