It was a wheel hassle for the maintenance crew.
A TAP Air Portugal plane was stranded on an airport runway in the Azores for four days after more than 130 hamsters broke free from their cages and invaded every nook and cranny of the Airbus 320.
The chaos unfolded when baggage handlers at Ponta Delgada Airport on Portugal’s Sao Miguel Island discovered the animals’ carriers had been chewed through, setting off a mad dash to locate the stowaways before they could gnaw their way through the plane’s electrical wires or damage other critical components.
The hamsters were part of a menagerie, including ferrets and birds, destined for sale at a pet shop on the island, according to local news outlet Correio da Manhã.
The rogue rodents were reportedly supposed to be placed on an earlier flight but were denied entry due to the poor condition of their cages.
Maintenance workers spent days combing the aircraft’s interior to locate the diminutive escapees, eventually locating all but 16.
After one final push to find the remaining hamsters, the plane finally headed back to Lisbon.
Animals have been known to occasionally wreak havoc on flights after ending up in the cabin, from rats to otters to swarms of buzzing mosquitoes.
