Hamsters on a plane

What is the world coming to when a young college girl can’t take her emotional support hamster on the plane with her?  Last November, Belen Aldecosea was told she couldn’t bring her hamster, Pebbles, on a Spirit Airlines flight out of Baltimore. The airline employee allegedly advised the young woman to release the hamster into the wild or flush it down the toilet. Aldercosea chose to flush the hamster as she thought that would be more humane.

Well, I have some problems with this course of action. First, there is nothing humane about flushing anything down a public toilet unless it is that bag of “medicinal” marijuana you forgot to remove from your backpack before going through security. Second, isn’t this how we wind up with giant, mutant hamsters in our sewer system? Although there is nothing that Baltimore needs more than an attack from a giant, mutant hamster, we don’t want to start an epidemic in the rest of the country.

It seems the airlines are getting a little fed up with all the emotional support animals people are trying to get onto airplanes these days. One of the latest incidents occurred In January when Delta Airlines denied a woman permission to bring her emotional support peacock on a flight out of Newark. The woman claimed she had a ticket for the peacock and all the appropriate paperwork validating the peacock’s emotional support credentials. And yet, she was still denied. Wow. Where is the humanity? I wonder if she had to flush the peacock down the toilet?

Airlines don’t allow reptiles, rodents, ferrets, insects, spiders, goats, or animals with tusks or hooves to fly on the airplane. What? You mean I can’t bring my emotional support javelina on an airplane flight? I’m shocked and disappointed in the capitalistic, fat-cat, animal-hater airlines that choose to ignore my emotional problems for no other reason than bogus concerns about the health and safety of other passengers and the flight crew.

According to Delta Airlines, they flew some 250,000 emotional support animals on their airplanes— increase of 150 percent since 2015. The number of incidents involving such things as biting or defecating animals on flights has doubled since 2016. It used to be that the worst thing that could happen to you would be If you wound up sitting next to a squalling baby on a long flight.  Now, you can end up sitting next to someone’s emotional support animal that might maul you to death and then defecate on your corpse.  

The emotional support animal concept is a relatively new phenomenon. It seems to me that if someone is so emotionally fragile that they need to travel with a hamster, maybe they shouldn’t be flying at all. Maybe they should be traveling in a wagon or an ark. Maybe that’s what Noah was up to with all those animals he had on his boat. Maybe they were all emotional support animals. After all, the earth had just been wiped out by a flood. Who wouldn’t want an emotional support animal or two?

Flying on an airplane used to be a classy affair. Now, airline flights are starting to take on the same characteristics as traveling on a bus in rural Central America. You get squeezed into a smelly, overcrowded vehicle and end up sitting next to someone who is traveling with their goat.

Well, you will be happy to know that young Belen Aldecosea, who so humanely flushed Pebbles down the toilet, has acquired a new emotional support rodent. However, this one has a tiny mask and snorkel just in case.