a cheetah.

How’d you like to get up close and personal to that face?

It was all in a day’s work for a baggage handler at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport on Thursday.

When the handler opened the cargo hold of an incoming flight, she found herself face to face with a cheetah.

The flight, which originated in Portland, counted two cheetahs among its cargo.

One of them got loose mid-flight and was snooping around passengers’ bags when the plane landed.

Bet nobody told the handler about THAT occupational hazard.

If you’re wondering how the cheetahs made it past TSA, they were legitimate cargo: the cheetahs were in transit from one zoo on the West Coast to another zoo on the East Coast.

Julie Schwietert

Julie Schwietert Collazo is a writer, editor, researcher, and translator who lives in New York and Mexico City. She is the managing editor of the Matador Network.