If a title like that doesn't get you readin', nothing will.

A few weeks ago I was stopped while passing through airport security at PDX. An item in my carry-on immediately brought a long line of irritated passengers to a halt. The cause for alarm?

A cigarette lighter covered in photos of kittens.

A friend brought this bizarre knickknack back from France after discovering it for sale at a gas station outside Reims. I'd left it in my bag after a previous trip and forgotten all about it until airport security intervened. After scanning me with a metal-sniffing wand and examining every last inch of my carry-on for bomb making materials, they let me go under one condition: the lighter had to be confiscated.

Parisian kitty lighters are pretty rare in this part of the world so I wasn't going to let it go without at least a twenty second argument. Over the past few months the lighter has proved to be a great conversation piece, mainly because one of the felines looks terrified, implying that it's meant to light more than just cigarettes on fire.

Yeah, I know. Animal cruelty is never, ever funny but, in this context, isn't it at least mildly amusing?

After one guard misunderstood my rambling explanation, she concocted a story about how the lighter was a sentimental gift from my "fiancee." Satisfied, her colleagues allowed me to keep it under the condition that I would leave it in Portland.

I decided to pay $5 to drop it off at a storage shop near baggage claim. When I got back into town on Labor Day the place was closed.

The lighter is still out there so I have a decision to make. Is a disposable lighter, no matter how odd and one of a kind, really worth a drive back to the airport?

I'm looking for advice so it's time for another ridiculous poll. Feel free to do my thinking for me. What would you do?

The Kitten Poll
Should I go back to the airport to get the lighter? Uh, yeah. It's a lighter. Covered in kittens. Uh, no. It's a disposable lighter. Fuggedaboutit. See if it's there the next time you go to the airport (likely sometime in 2006). Con someone else into picking it up for you Use the $ you would have spent on gas to get out there on rum instead Current Results