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Emotional Support Hamster Flushed!


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2018 Feb 8, 12:34pm   4,321 views  16 comments

by zzyzzx   ➕follow (5)   💰tip   ignore  

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2018/02/08/spirit-airlines-employee-told-student-to-flush-emotional-support-hamster-down-toilet-student-alleges.html

A college student said she flushed her emotional support hamster down the toilet after Spirit Airlines refused to let her bring her furry pet on the plane.

Belen Aldecosea, 21, of Miami Beach, Florida, told the Miami Herald that she contacted Spirit Airlines before her flight from Baltimore to South Florida on Nov. 21, 2017, regarding traveling with her dwarf hamster, Pebbles. Aldecosea claimed the airline told her it was not a problem to bring her hamster on the flight.

However, when the student arrived at the airport she said the airline refused to let Pebbles on the plane. Aldecosea said she did not have many options since her family was in Florida and her friends were hours away. The student claimed a Spirit employee suggested she either flush Pebbles down the toilet or let the animal free.

Aldecosea skipped her flight and tried to rent a car instead, but said she was too young to rent one. So she did what she felt was the most humane choice.

“She was scared. I was scared. It was horrifying trying to put her in the toilet,” Aldecosea said. “I was emotional. I was crying. I sat there for a good 10 minutes crying in the stall.”

The student said she considered letting Pebbles run free outside but could not bear thinking of her hamster freezing to death or getting hit.

“I didn’t have any other options,” she said.

Pigs, ducks, peacocks — there's no limit to what passengers have used as support animals.

In a statement, PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch told Fox News: "One phone call could have saved this animal, or some kind person at the airport could have helped. Flushing a living being down the toilet is not only cruel but also illegal, and both the person who killed this animal and Spirit Airlines - if an employee did, in fact, advise the woman to drown the hamster - should be charged. This must have been a horrific, terrifying death."

Spirit Airlines spokesman Derek Dombrowski told Fox News that an employee misinformed Aldecosea that Pebbles was allowed on the flight but denied that an employee suggested she flush the rodent down the toilet.

"After researching this incident, we can say confidently that at no point did any of our agents suggest this guest (or any other for that matter) should flush or otherwise injure an animal. It is incredibly disheartening to hear this guest reportedly decided to end her own pet’s life," Dombrowski told Fox News.

The Miami Herald noted that the U.S. Transportation Safety Administration was fine with hamsters on the flight, but airlines are allowed to choose if they want the rodents on board.

Aldecosea said Pebbles was a doctor-approved emotional support animal that helped her when she developed a growth in her neck while at school in Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The student said she bought Pebbles for some company.

“She (Pebbles) was so loving. It was like she knew I needed somebody,” Aldecosea said.

Aldecosea, who now attends the Texas State University, said she was considering legal action against Spirit due to the airline “pressuring her into making an anguished decision with a pet certified by her doctor as an emotional support animal.”

Her attorney, Adam Goodman said this case was different than the woman who made headlines last week after a United Airlines flight refused her request to bring her emotional support peacock on a flight.

"This wasn’t a giant peacock that could pose a danger to other passengers. This was a tiny cute harmless hamster that could fit in the palm of her hand,” Goodman said.

Comments 1 - 16 of 16        Search these comments

1   RWSGFY   2018 Feb 8, 12:37pm  

#stupidcunts
2   Tenpoundbass   2018 Feb 8, 12:37pm  

Pebbles will be missed by all.
3   georgeliberte   2018 Feb 8, 12:38pm  

Meanwhile my emotional support boa had to go hungry.
4   zzyzzx   2018 Feb 8, 12:44pm  

Well, this is the Tide pod generation.

Poor animal is going to be suspended in a frozen block of urine and jettisoned into an open field somewhere.

This girl didn't give her pet any emotional support at all.
5   Tenpoundbass   2018 Feb 8, 12:52pm  

zzyzzx says
This girl didn't give her pet any emotional support at all.

I am to understand that this was at the airport before she boarded the plane. Her options were flush or turn lose. I don't think they would want that running lose around the plane.
6   MisdemeanorRebel   2018 Feb 8, 12:56pm  

Come on, this has got to be a fake. Some emotional support, if you can just flush down the toilet.

Once upon a time 21-year old women sweated over the loom and the iron pot stove with 3 kids underfoot, when not wrestling pigs or butchering chickens. Today, they need emotional support hamsters.

I'm going with this story being a joke, however.
7   anonymous   2018 Feb 8, 3:29pm  

zzyzzx says
A college student said she flushed her emotional support hamster down the toilet after Spirit Airlines refused to let her bring her furry pet on the plane.


Poor little Snowflake, maybe she should have read the rules on Spirit's web site first:

Emotional Support and Psychiatric Service Animals

We accept emotional support and psychiatric service animals as long as you have current documentation (no older than one year preceding the date of your scheduled initial flight) which must meet the following criteria:

On letterhead of a licensed mental health professional including a medical doctor specifically treating the passenger's mental or emotional disability (e.g. psychiatrist, psychologist, or licensed clinical social worker) stating the following:

You have a mental health related disability recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition (DSM IV);
You need the emotional support or psychiatric service animal as an accommodation for air travel and/or for activity at your destination;
The individual providing the assessment is a licensed mental health professional and the passenger is under his or her professional care; and
The date and type of the mental health professional's license and the state or other jurisdiction in which it was issued.

Spirit does not accept snakes, other reptiles, rodents, ferrets, and spiders.


https://customersupport.spirit.com/hc/en-us/articles/202096816-Can-I-bring-my-service-emotional-support-or-psychiatric-service-animal-on-my-flight-
8   MisdemeanorRebel   2018 Feb 8, 3:48pm  

anon_2d3fb says
Spirit does not accept snakes, other reptiles, rodents, ferrets, and spiders.

Isn't a hamster a rodent?

Betcha she had no Doctor's Note, either.

HEYYOU says
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”


Then the Peruvians are totally evil, since I think the Inca ate Guinea Pigs.
9   Ceffer   2018 Feb 8, 7:42pm  

The airline didn't object to the emotional support hamster. They objected to the PVC pipe she was carrying to let it roam around her tweetie during the flight.

Just think of what these demented women would do if they had a toilet big enough to flush their husbands.
10   lostand confused   2018 Feb 8, 7:45pm  

This butch flushes a hamster down the toilet and is considering suing the airline-WTF.
11   Ceffer   2018 Feb 8, 7:49pm  

If the emotional support hamster started eating her flight peanuts, she would have squashed it's little guts out and flung it all over the other passengers.
13   Strategist   2018 Feb 8, 9:37pm  

zzyzzx says

A college student said she flushed her emotional support hamster down the toilet after Spirit Airlines refused to let her bring her furry pet on the plane.


This is animal cruelty plain and simple. Cruel, immoral and disgusting. She needs to be severely punished. Spirit is partly responsible too.
14   Ceffer   2018 Feb 8, 10:47pm  

What exactly does emotional support consist of when you are fucking crazy?

Are we supposed to believe that just because some whack job has managed to hold an animal hostage that they aren't going to lose their shit in public?
15   lostand confused   2018 Feb 9, 4:45am  

So if take my rooster to a plane and say it is my emotional support rooster-then they refuse to let me bring it on board-so I cook it and eat it, am I now entitled to millions of dollars from the airplane??
16   WookieMan   2018 Feb 9, 6:05am  

TwoScoopsPlissken says

Betcha she had no Doctor's Note, either.


The fact there are literally doctors out there writing notes for these women (I've yet to see a man with an emotional support animal) is astounding. Without going into detail, had a person I know rent an apartment, had a dog, didn't tell landlord. Landlord found out. They got a doctors note saying it was an emotional support animal and by law they could have it in the apartment.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are doctors out there taking $500 on the side cash or whatever to write these notes. All he has to do is point to the victim in his defense and say, "the fucking chick needs support from a hamster, you think she's right in the head?" There's really no risk for them to write these notes as long as businesses allow these "animals" in their rules. Then incidences like this happen and next thing you know there are going to be flying zoos, because the companies take so much heat and just cave.

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