An American basketballer who flew into Brisbane with his pet bulldog stashed in his hand luggage is about to feel the tyranny of distance, with the pooch to be deported.
Lamar Patterson's beloved French bulldog, Kobe, will be sent packing after the American player and Brisbane Bullets recruit arrived in Australia on Thursday with the dog tucked away in his bag.
Patterson was briefly detained. He's since been released but his pooch remains in quarantine and will be returned to the US on Friday, the Department of Agriculture said.
It appears that cabin crew on Patterson's Qantas flight from Los Angeles failed to notice that his four-legged friend was onboard without an import permit.
Pittsburgh Panthers forward Lamar Patterson. Source: AAP
The player is expected to front the media on Friday to explain what happened.
But his new team says it was an innocent mistake, not a deliberate attempt to flout Australia's quarantine laws.
Media reports said Patterson took his dog on an internal US flight with American Airlines, which does allow pets onboard, before boarding his connecting flight to Australia.
But apparently something got lost in translation.
"When he got to the airport, he asked if he could take his dog and the response was yes and it was even on his boarding pass that he was travelling with his dog. Obviously there was some confusion," Bullets coach Andrej Lemanis told The Courier-Mail.
"They probably thought he only meant domestically and when he got to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) no one said anything to him, he went through security. Somehow he got it on the plane."
The cabin crew were not aware that the basketballer had his beloved pup stashed away in his hand luggage. Source: Instagram @lamarpatterson13
Lemanis said the team probably should have schooled its new recruit about Australia's quarantine laws.
The incident has echoes of the 2015 Johnny Depp and Amber Heard saga, when the US couple illegally smuggled their Yorkshire Terriers Pistol and Boo into Australia.
Heard later pleaded guilty in a Queensland court of falsifying quarantine documents and copped a $1000 fine.
The couple also made a public apology video to atone, but many perceived their dead-pan expressions and tone as a signal that they were mocking the situation, which included a public stoush between Depp and then agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce.
At one point, Mr Joyce said they'd better "bugger off" back to the US or he'd have the dogs put down. Depp had his own fun with the spat, saying Mr Joyce looked like he was "inbred with a tomato".
"It's not a criticism," he added during an interview on the Jimmy Kimmel show.
