"This guy from the counter yells at me and tells me, 'You’re not going to make this flight. Give it to somebody. Get rid of it.'"

"I said, 'No way, I’m not going to get rid of my baby.'"

Said Maria Fraterrigo, 81, quoted in "Grandmother Is Stranded When Her Parrot ‘Plucky’ Can’t Board Flight/Plucky, an African gray parrot, accompanied its owner on a Frontier Airlines flight to Puerto Rico in January. But a gate agent would not let it on board the return flight" (NYT).

Once they let her fly out with the animal, it was unfair not to allow her to return with it. It's one thing to say "Give it to somebody, get rid of it" about a newt or a gecko, but this was a parrot. Those things have some individuality and personality, especially from the viewpoint of the owner. They talk. And they live a long time. Plucky is 24.

And whether you support the "emotional support animal" loophole or not, the airline owed her consistency within a single round trip. 

The woman's ordeal made the news and politicians, including Chuck Schumer, got into the game and pressured the airline. A Frontier spokesperson said "Parrots do not qualify as emotional support animals under our policies nor those of any other U.S. airline that we are aware of," but "We are pleased to have enabled Plucky’s return to New York," and "We apologize for any confusion that may have occurred with respect to our policies.”

"[O]ur upstairs neighbors acquired an emotional support dog for their teenager. The dog runs back and forth for 30 minutes at a time."

"At least three nights a week, it scratches a bedroom rug, waking us up throughout the night. We have shared our concerns with the neighbors, asking them to crate the dog at night and walk him when he’s rambunctious. They seemed receptive, but the problem persists. How can we balance the rights of people to have emotional support animals with our right to live peacefully?"

A woman who had heretofore enjoyed 37 years of pleasant life in her condo sends a question to the NYT real estate adviser.

I won't quote any of the answer. It boils down to: NOTHING.

I should add that "boils down" was not intended as any sort of reference to the last lines of the previous post. You can do nothing, nothing, nothing about that dog that is scraping at the other side of your ceiling all night long. You should have thought of this possibility when you chose to take up condo life 4 decades ago. Dog people good. Dog haters bad. Bad bad bad haters. You deserve to lie awake all night for your failure to love.

"Therapy llamas patrol Portland airport to relieve passenger stress."

 WaPo reports.

Airports around the globe use a variety of methods to inject some Zen into one of the busiest travel periods of the year. They decorate their halls in holiday lights, host carolers and concerts, and bring in therapy dogs for group canine counseling.

Portland does all of the above. True to the city’s quirky spirit, it also invites local camelids to the airport to canoodle with passengers....

Canoodle!!

Wikipedia etymology:

The form of lying and cheating that some people openly acknowledge, under their full name, in The New York Times.

I'm reading "Sharing a City Apartment With a Big Dog? Good Luck. First, you’ll have to convince someone to rent to you" (NYT):

Natalya Haddix, 24, a marketing consultant, is one of many pet owners who have skirted housing restrictions by declaring their dog an emotional support animal. This has allowed her to share her 688-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in Miami with a Great Dane puppy named Cair.... 

Ren and Zach Glass sidestepped disaster when they won a housing lottery in 2016 for a small two-bedroom apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, only to discover that the building did not accept dogs. They registered their shepherd-collie-pit bull mix, Trolley, as an emotional support animal.... After Trolley died, a little more than a year ago, they adopted Cosmo, a 50-pound pit bull mix....

"He’s a very special gator, but I wouldn’t recommend that anyone get one. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you will get bit."

Said Joie Henney, quoted in "His emotional support animal is an alligator. They sleep in the same bed. ‘When he turns his nose toward you, that means he expects a kiss,’ Joie Henney said" (Washington Post). 

It isn’t common for people to want alligators as pets, though... “When they get to three feet, nobody wants them,” Henney said. “They can bite and they’re extremely hard to handle.” Wildlife experts agree: Alligators generally don’t make good pets, and they’re illegal to own in many states. The animals can also be deadly.... 

“The jaw pressure from an alligator’s bite force is incredibly strong, and their powerful tails can whip you,” said Raul Diaz, a herpetologist and evolutionary development biologist who teaches at California State University at Los Angeles. They are also predators who are hardwired to believe that other creatures want to eat them, so they are defensive early on, he said... 

Henney now takes his gator to swim parties, football games, and to schools and summer camps for educational presentations about reptiles. WallyGator does not have a harness around his mouth, but he has never bitten anyone, Henney said.

The alligator is "registered," we're told, as an "emotional support animal," but registered with what? Something called the "U.S. Service Animals website." But this isn't a service animal! There's a photo of the registration card, but the card doesn't name any organization. The caption declares that the card "show[s] he's a registered emotional support animal."

I'm going to print out a card that says I'm a "Registered Opponent of Emotional Support Animals." It will show that I'm a registered opponent of emotional support animals.

The Washington Post article is festooned with embedded posts from Henney's Instagram account and other photos by Joie Henney, including photos of him taking the alligator to assisted living homes to be petted by frail old ladies. Like this:

Henney says "An alligator isn’t going to attack you for no reason," but I don't like the touch of your hand and I'm hungry are reasons.

This is one of the stupidest articles I've ever seen in The Washington Post. I see the commenters over there agree with me. ("A 69 year old owner getting older and more frail by the year, and a 7 year old alligator getting bigger and stronger by the year. What could go wrong?")

"Airlines no longer will be required to accommodate travelers who want to fly with emotional support animals such as pigs, rabbits and turkeys..."

"... under a final rule announced Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Transportation.... Emotional support animals aren't considered service animals under the new rule.... Over the years, airlines have had to accommodate a growing variety of animals as the definition of what is considered a service animal expanded to include animals that travelers said they needed for emotional and psychological support when flying.... Service animals are those that have been trained to perform a certain function, and under the Americans With Disabilities Act, reasonable accommodations must be made for a person using one. However, no training is required for emotional support animals, which has led some to question their legitimacy. Before the rule change, federal law didn't address the issue of emotional support animals, so airlines had little recourse but to accommodate them.... 'This final rule will ensure that untrained pets will never roam free in the aircraft cabin again.'"

WaPo reports.

I'm happy to see this rule. Click on my "service animals" tag to see what I've written on the topic over the years. I'll just highlight this 2018 post that was based on a David Leonhardt column in the NYT, "It’s Time to End the Scam of Flying Pets" (NYT). Here's the quote from Leonhardt that began the post:

The whole bizarre situation [of emotional support animals on airplanes] is a reminder of why trust matters so much to a well-functioning society. The best solution, of course, would be based not on some Transportation Department regulation but on simple trust. People who really needed service animals could then bring on them planes without having to carry documents. Maybe a trust-based system will return at some point. But it won’t return automatically. When trust breaks down and small bits of dishonesty become normal, people need to make a conscious effort to restore basic decency.

Leonhardt did not want a rule! He imagined people working through the problem on our own! I'm inclined to resist overregulation, but I thought his "best solution" was a pipe dream. I wrote:

The best solution...

Voltaire said: The best is the enemy of the good. ("Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.")

I don't see how we're supposed to get to trust, when in a huge system, like airline transportation, you're always going to get some cheaters and it doesn't take many — 1%? — to create a problem like the one symbolized by Dexter the emotional-support peacock (picture at the NYT link).

And I'm not convinced trust is the answer. People need to be observant and skeptical.

I'll quote John Stuart Mill now: "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

Sometimes you need rules. 

A photo.

View this post on Instagram

As much as our family is going to miss this dog, we’re comforted to know he’ll bring the same joy to his new home, Walter Reed, that he brought to 41.

A post shared by George W. Bush (@georgewbush) on Dec 2, 2018 at 6:55pm PST

"I can’t technically take maternity leave. Because if I take maternity leave, then I won’t be allowed to sponsor legislation or vote during that time period."

Says Tammy Duckworth, the pregnant Senator.

Key word, "technically." When Senators want personal time, don't they just take it? I can understand a politician wanting to purport to exemplify problems that everyday people have, but Duckworth doesn't have the problem of needing authorization to take time off from work to deal with childbirth and the care of a newborn.

There's also the breastfeeding question:

“You are not allowed to bring children onto the floor of the Senate at all,” Duckworth pointed out. “If I have to vote, and I’m breastfeeding my child, especially during my maternity leave period, what do I do? Leave her sitting outside?”

Obviously, you bring the baby onto the Senate floor and everyone loves it (or acts like they do). It's about like the way they'd deal with the no-dogs-on-the Senate floor rule if there were a blind Senator with a seeing-eye dog. Everyone would instantly and automatically understand that there was an implicit exception to the rule. This is like the first-year law-school problem of the sign that says "No motor vehicles in the park" and the question whether a paraplegic in an electric wheelchair can go in.

But I'd love to see a Senator try to bring an emotional support animal— perhaps a bichon frise — onto the Senate floor.

"The whole bizarre situation" — of emotional support animals on airplanes — "is a reminder of why trust matters so much to a well-functioning society."

"The best solution, of course, would be based not on some Transportation Department regulation but on simple trust. People who really needed service animals could then bring on them planes without having to carry documents. Maybe a trust-based system will return at some point. But it won’t return automatically. When trust breaks down and small bits of dishonesty become normal, people need to make a conscious effort to restore basic decency."

Writes David Leonhardt in "It’s Time to End the Scam of Flying Pets" (NYT).

The best solution...

Voltaire said: The best is the enemy of the good. ("Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.")

I don't see how we're supposed to get to trust, when in a huge system, like airline transportation, you're always going to get some cheaters and it doesn't take many — 1%? — to create a problem like the one symbolized by Dexter the emotional-support peacock (picture at the NYT link).

And I'm not convinced trust is the answer. People need to be observant and skeptical.

I'll quote John Stuart Mill now: "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

"Third Circuit: neighbors who criticized condo residents over emotional support dogs must face civil rights suit."

"Now the Third Circuit... reversed grants of summary judgment in favor of the two blog writers and ruled that they could properly be sued for damages for creating a hostile environment under the Fair Housing Act."

It described as “harassment” various instances of their critical speech and noted that a single instance of harassing speech could give rise to liability under the law. It is not clear whether the parties raised, and the court did not make any gesture toward considering, whether some or all of the statements involved might be protected by the First Amendment, which is mentioned nowhere in the opinion....

ADDED: Here's the opinion. Key passages:

"My neighbor is a flight attendant. He just posted this photo of someone's 'therapy pet,' on his flight."

View post on imgur.com

"But airlines face fines as high as $150,000 for refusing requests for legitimate support animals, and as those requests increase, so does the threat of a lawsuit.... [U]ntil the Department of Transportation changes guidelines, there's only one solution. 'The airlines and everyone on board will have to live with it'...."

"A guy had a miniature horse, which didn’t fit comfortably in the back, so he was put in first class."

"The airline made the horse wear these little shoes so it didn’t scuff the plane, but it pooped all over and the other first-class travelers weren’t happy."

From "People are faking disabilities to fly with their pets."

"Beaver Dam Common Council voted to not allow kangaroos to be considered service animals after a woman brought her kangaroo into a McDonald’s."

Only dogs and miniature horses from now on.

ADDED: From the image-search annals of "therapy kangaroo":



That's not the Beaver Dam kangaroo.

That's the Broken Arrow, Oklahoma kangaroo, who "rides in a car seat, is dressed in a shirt and pants each day and is rarely away from his doting caretaker."

"Woman with kangaroo asked to leave McDonald's/Woman claimed kangaroo was service animal."

The news from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.

So the lady getting on the plane with you seems to be carrying a duffel bag, "But it turns out it wasn't a duffel bag."

"We could smell it and it was a pig on a leash. She tethered it to the arm rest next to me and started to deal with her stuff, but the pig was walking back and forth. I was terrified, because I was thinking I'm gonna be on the plane with the pig."

Said the professor, who wasn't pleased that this lady sat down next to him.

This doesn't surprise me at all, because I've read "Pets Allowed/Why are so many animals now in places where they shouldn’t be?" It's got a whole section where the author — Patricia Marx — tested the phenomenon of emotional-support animals by taking a pig on a plane:

We settled into seats 16A and 16B...  Daphne arranged herself on my lap... [A] flight attendant passed Row 16. “Aren’t you adorable!” she said....

[On the return flight] A smiling agent, approaching us at the gate, said, “We heard a cute piggy went through security.” She added, “If you want to pre-board, the cabin crew would love it.”

At the entrance to the plane, we were greeted by three giddy flight attendants: “Oh, my God, don’t you just love her?” “I’m so jealous. I want one!”; “I hope you’re in my section”; “I’m coming back for pictures.”

As we exited at Newark, a member of the flight crew pinned pilot’s wings onto Daphne’s E.S.A. sweatshirt.

Why didn't the pig next to the professor get the same friendly treatment? It too was presented as an emotional-support animal. One difference is that Marx's pig was only 26 pounds, and the one next to the professor is said to have been 50 to 70 pounds. The latter pig was also described as smelly and "disruptive." I'll also guess that the lady sitting next to the professor was not as smooth a talker as Marx, who was creating material for what turned out to be a hilarious and disturbing New Yorker article.

If "yes means yes," the nonhuman animal never says yes.

So don't swim with dolphins and tickle their bellies. And quit petting those beasts you call "pets."

I want to connect the previous post about the dolphins to the post from a few days ago about emotional support animals. The latter post links to a New Yorker article that is very critical of people who weasel — I know, not fair to weasels — around rules against animals in restaurants, shops, museums, and public transport by presenting their pets as "emotional support animals." That's mostly about what an imposition on other human beings this is. But consider the animals themselves.

The author, Patricia Marx, says "No animals were harmed during the writing of this article," but she took a turkey into a crowded NYC deli, where he "lay immobile, on his side with his feet splayed as if he’d conked out on the sofa," and then his "head had turned purple," which signaled to his handlers that he was "too stressed" and needed to leave. And the alpaca in the museum began "intently humming a distress signal" and had to leave.

Nonhuman animals cannot talk. We look into their faces and see enough human likeness to stir up our thoughts of what they might be saying, and we tend to flatter ourselves and serve our own interests by imagining them projecting the thoughts we want them to have. There's a lot of talk these days about establishing a "yes means yes" standard for intelligent, verbal human adults on college campuses. The concern is that free citizens might go along with sexual activities and fail to convey their unwillingness in spoken words. Sexual intercourse, in this view, is so intimately and deeply invasive on the body that a spoken "yes" is a necessary step.

You might agree or disagree about the importance of hearing the affirmative spoken message of permission to become intimate with another human being's body, but I want to talk about what we do to the bodies of our pets who have no capacity to say "yes" or "no" and who are trapped in our space and cannot walk away but must submit to our self-serving petting.

Yes, the animal you're confining at home or controlling outdoors may seem to accept or enjoy your physical intrusions, but think how you would adapt if you were completely controlled and dependent like that. Then complicate that thought with the reality that as a human being, you have no way to know how the nonhuman mind works, what fears and confusion and gnawing needs roil inside that head with the eyes that give you the look that makes you feel you should be kind and give food.

"Street Portraits Close Ups Only."

I like this Flickr group. (A Flickr group contains lots of different photographers' photos that fit a particular category.) I found that through this striking photo of a woman with a cat — the woman and the cat are striking in entirely different ways — taken here in Madison, featured as yesterday's photo-of-the-day at the Madison newspaper Isthmus.

Do not even think of getting a cat like that as your emotional-support animal.  That cat makes me think there should be a new category of animal you get to take everywhere. Not emotional-support animal. Emotional-[something else] animal. Excitement. Challenge. Tribulation. Chaos....

Scrolling through the "Street Portraits Close Ups Only" group, I almost randomly clicked on this woman who's wearing a priest's collar:

I saw this woman standing alone with the festive Pride Week crowd swirling around her. She looked relaxed but pensive. Because of the abundance of creative costumes, I assumed her religious outfit, contrasted by a satin sash, was costumery for the festivities. I couldn’t have been more wrong....

"I decided to go undercover as a person with an anxiety disorder (not a stretch) and run around town with five un-cuddly, non-nurturing animals for which I obtained E.S.A. credentials..."

Patricia Marx uncovers the rampant scam that is goes by the name emotional-support animal.

The first animal I test-drove was a fifteen-pound, thirteen-inch turtle. I tethered it to a rabbit leash, to which I had stapled a cloth E.S.A. badge (purchased on Amazon), and set off for the Frick Collection....

Here’s what happened at the Chanel boutique: “Hello. I’m looking for a pocketbook that will match my snake,” I said to a salesman. “Maybe something in reptile.”... he salesman handed me a smart, yellow python bag marked $9,000. “I think this would work the best. It’s one of our classics. I think yellow. Red makes the snake look too dull.”...

Henry was a Royal Palm [turkey]...

An alpaca... been granted permission to clomp through the premises of a national treasure that houses hundreds of priceless antiques...

I’m pleased to report that passing through security with a pig in your arms is easier than doing so without one....

Much more at the link.

The Democrats' Senate candidate in Iowa is going to lose because of chickens.

"At no time did I ever — ever — threaten a lawsuit or threaten litigation. Never. And anybody who says that I did is not being truthful," says Bruce Braley. "This was a personal dispute between my wife and a neighbor because chickens were on our property all the time."

Even if Braley didn’t threaten a suit, some around Holiday Lake bristled at his tactics. “They are not neighborly,” said [the chicken's owner Pauline] Hampton, a mental health therapist who uses the hens as therapy animals. “In Iowa, we are very well known for being friendly, and if one has a problem with another, we always talk to them face-to-face. This kind of floored me.”

What Braley's wife supposedly said to the therapy chicken lady, who'd come to the door with a gift of a dozen fresh eggs, was: "We aren’t going to accept your eggs — and we have filed a formal complaint against you."

Another neighbor, William Nagel, who sits on the homeowners association board, said, “Buddy, we’re here in Iowa. We talk like men here and we act like men. Usually, a man’s word is like gold. A handshake is a contract. Neighbors are neighbors, and if you’ve got a problem with your neighbor, you talk it out.”...

“You threaten to sue somebody because a chicken’s on your property? That’s absolutely ridiculous,” [said Braley's Republican opponent, Joni Ernst]. “In Red Oak, my neighbor next door, when we first moved into our house, their kids were raising chickens in the garage as a project. No big deal. Oh, my goodness. It’s Iowa. Come on. Get over yourself.”

Brayley is a lawyer, by the way, and Ernst is that lady who "grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm."

"Emotional support animals... travel free, and restrictions on their size and species are left to the airlines’ discretion."

"They are not required to be caged. And unlike service animals, which undergo extensive training, they require no training."

Their task is to provide comfort to their companions. To serve the needs of the animals and their owners, a cottage industry of websites and doctors advertising documents that certify emotional support animals has emerged....

Carla Black, a psychotherapist in Marina del Rey, Calif., began receiving enough requests for emotional support animal certification that this year she began advertising on her website. For $99, she provides an hour of her time, over the phone or Skype, and a clinical assessment, along with a prescription letter, which is valid for one year.

Ms. Black said in a telephone interview that before she issues a letter she ensures the client is eligible under criteria set by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. “I make sure they qualify for depression or whatever, P.T.S.D.,” she said, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.

I take it that must be covered by an Obamacare-compliant health plan, which must cover mental health.

One more reason to avoid getting on an airplane. I picture myself seated between the lady with a potbellied pig on her lap — his dripping snout overhanging the armrest — and the man who's having a breakdown because he's allergic to pigs.