Got any gators in there?

My luggage is always getting me into trouble.

I don’t travel anywhere without knives. At the minimum, I’ll pack my two favorites: a 10-inch Mac knife and a Henckels paring knife. Sometimes, if I’m cooking for a big event, I bring a whole set with me. It all goes into my check-in bag, of course.

When the Transportation Security Administration had just been created, the agents didn’t know what to do with a knife-packing chef from New Orleans. I remember showing up with a box of frozen sauces at the T.S.A. checkpoint at Louis Armstrong. I admit, my luggage looked a little suspicious. I had blown up latex gloves and stuffed them into a Styrofoam box to protect the contents.

“What’s this?” asked one of the agents as he dug through the box.

“Fish fume.”

“And this?”

“Lobster roe,” I replied.

The agents seemed to be disappointed. Apparently, they thought they’d found a terrorist. As a consolation prize to themselves, they confiscated my Kyocera ceramic knife set, which cost me hundreds of dollars.

But the T.S.A. is pretty tame compared with customs agents. I recently visited France, where I stocked up on sausages, cured ham and saucisson. At customs, I was met by a grim-faced agent.

“Have you been to a farm?” he said in a monotone voice.

I hadn’t.

“Do you have any fruit or meats?”

I hesitated. Do cured meats count? “Uh, no,” I stammered.

He gave me that look that said, “If we find something, you’re going down,” and zipped open my bag. I had wrapped my salami in a sock for protection. When the customs agent discovered it, he took a second or two to process what he was seeing. Maybe he was a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan.

“I’m going to have to confiscate this,” he said, shaking his head.

“Please,” I said, unable to get the thought of spending the rest of my life in an 8-foot-by-6-foot cell at Guantánamo Bay out of my mind. “Take it all.”

I imagined my agent having lunch that day — thin slices of ham on a baguette. Maybe a Cuban cigar and a nice glass of confiscated French wine. “Don’t bother thanking me,” I wanted to say. But then I remembered Gitmo, and kept my comments to myself.

Agents don’t always have the last laugh, though. Last spring, I flew to New York to promote Louisiana seafood on the “Today” show. We cooked three different dishes: a crawfish boil, a crawfish pie and a crawfish flambé with truffles.

It’s almost impossible to get your hands on live crawfish in New York, so I shipped 100 pounds of live crawfish in my checked-in luggage.

When I landed in New York, I noticed that the T.S.A. had opened the box of crawfish and then carelessly resealed it. I also noted that the critters were very excitable. On the set, the crawfish scaled the side of the box and escaped before we knew it. I spent the better part of half an hour rounding them up.

And that’s when a thought crossed my mind that brought a smile to my face. I pictured the hapless T.S.A. agents chasing crawfish around their checkpoint.

Next time, I thought, I’ll offer to make alligator piquant for the “Today” show.

John Besh is owner of Restaurant August and the Besh Steakhouse in New Orleans.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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