Loose Poodle Delays Fights at Boston Airport

Cramped after a Saturday night flight from Detroit, Choochy the poodle broke free after her plane landed at Boston's Logan Airport and for the next 17 hours, the tiny white fugitive managed to elude nearly a dozen Massport employees and State Police, holding up runway traffic as she cavorted on the tarmac.

Gideon Lester, a passenger on a delayed US Airways flight to LaGuardia in New York, saw the event unfold. "I'm sitting on a plane at Logan waiting to take off. The runway had been closed because a stray dog, looks like a poodle, is running around the tarmac."

Her romp ended yesterday afternoon when she was finally coaxed into custody, but not before she managed to delay at least eight flights for about 20 minutes each, according to Phil Orlandella, a Massport spokesman, who said the pup "did create a little havoc."

The poodle "seemed to be having a good time," said Lester, artistic director of the American Repertory Theatre. "They looked like they were running cattle." His fellow passengers were mostly amused rather than annoyed by the runaway, he said, but were "a little incredulous that it would take so many men so many hours to catch this little dog."

"Obviously, she's hungry and she's afraid," Orlandella said earlier in the day as employees chased Choochy around the runways. A safe but tired Choochy was reunited with her family, who live in Revere. Orlandella would not release the name of her family.

[Source: Boston Globe]