Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.
This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.
It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.
It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."
I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
You know I think I found a perfect way to be honest and travel with the pooch! Drive in your own vehicle! You'll see more sights, stay in a pet friendly hotel and maybe have some adventures. But thats just my opinion.
We've been flying two or three times a year the last few years, and with layovers and return flights that's probably eight or ten different flights. I haven't seen a single service dog. I wonder if it's more of a problem on other airlines or for certain departure point and destinations?
Oh, wait. At least half of those are international flights. I don't know how or if this applies to service dogs, but pets for sure have to quarantine before they can cross international borders. When we moved to Germany the second time, we had two dogs, and we rehomed them rather than put them in quarantine for (six months? I think it was).
And yet, they never ask people who had siblings things like "Was it hard, not being the center of attention?" Or, "How did it feel to feud with your siblings over the inheritance?"
To be fair, when it comes to the latter question, it doesn't really need to be asked because a lot of the time people will come out and complain about it on their own. That's what happened with my father-in-law, anyway.
And I will say this. Even though I was an only child, big family gatherings were a part of my childhood, and I generally enjoyed them. I do kind of miss it in middle age and do sometimes go overboard when it comes to giving Christmas gifts as a result.
Horace didn't "invent" souvenir. He maybe expanded the word's meaning from it's original use "to recollect" or "to remember" into "a token item that reminds me of something."
If this is how the article writer wants to define the beginnings of one word, he or she is clearly bad at this and everything else they wrote is now in question.
Admittedly, I don't fly all that often. I don't think I was on even one plane last year. And the last flight I took was rather pleasant, because it didn't have that issue. But I remember one flight in particular that, I'm fairly certain, held more canines than humans. The stench was horrific, and made me long for the good old days when cigarette smoke was the worst odor in an airplane cabin.
But it's not just airlines that have this problem.
As for "why," I'll tell you why, at the risk of mortally offending any readers who might be faking their service dogs: because they're inconsiderate twats.
There are people with legitimate need for a service animal. I get that. I'm in no way ragging on them. The fakers make their lives worse, though, because it leads the rest of us to stop taking true service animals, and their accompanying humans, seriously.
On the first leg of that trip, from New York to Los Angeles, a dog in a “service dog” vest barked at me at the gate. The dog (not its given name), looked to be a stout French bulldog, paced back and forth, and yapped at a couple of other travelers.
Okay, "(not its given name)" is legitimately hilarious.
It all made me realize how many dogs traveling these days are designated service dogs, so many that there’s no way each one was a thoroughly-trained working canine. Some of these pooches had to be impostors.
Ya think?
The trouble is, it's rude (and sometimes illegal) to call them out on this. Which is one reason the humans can take advantage of their Main Character Syndrome.
I'm fully aware that conditions requiring service animals aren't always visible. Hell, my ex-wife had epilepsy. She never had a service dog, but other epileptics do, and for very good reason. Point is, you'd never know she was in any way "differently abled" or whatever the current proper nomenclature is, unless she told you or had a seizure (rare) in front of you; she was a belly dancer, for fuck's sake. So yeah, not everyone with a service animal is obviously in need of one. But, again, that just makes the problem worse, because it's easier to fake.
Why are there so many? Why and how do so many people have them? Is certification that easy to get? Do this many people need them? Why is this one barking at me? Are these people who just want to take their dog on their trip? Does being suspicious of some of them make me awful? Is a fake service dog really that bad?
Because many people are inconsiderate twats, because many other people support and enable inconsiderate twattery, yes, no, because it's not a real service dog, yes, no, and hell to the exponent of yes.
Sadly, I could not speak to an actual service dog for an interview regarding this contentious subject.
Funny shit like this does manage to dilute my rage somewhat.
More and more people want to travel with their pets, and despite airline assurances about safety, owners still harbor some overall worry about traveling with their animals in cargo.
That's legitimate. It does not, however, excuse inconsiderate twattery. Also, "want to travel with their pets" is a whole different ball game from "need to travel with their pets."
At the same time, traveling in the US with a pet dog in cabin — thanks to a multitude of rules — is actually difficult.
We could re-regulate the airline industry, but... hey, why are you laughing?
“There are plenty of owner-trained, well-behaved service dogs, and they are training their dogs to do actual physical tasks, and they should be given access. But I think we’re also talking about a lot of people not wanting to leave their dogs at home,” Reiss says.
Again—because this comes up anytime someone rants about this on the internet—I am in no way saying that people who actually need a service animal are the problem. I am, in fact, saying the opposite: that the people with fake service animals make the lives of people with real service animals more difficult, and the last thing they need is more difficult lives.
That said, it’s even more complicated, because no one wants to be a person who treats someone with a disability with suspicion or doubt.
Then tighten the requirements, for shit's sake.
“That’s the thing, the rules don’t even matter,” Molly Carta, a woman living with cerebral palsy who has a service dog named Slate, tells Vox. “I feel that way half the time too. I’m like, why did I pay $50 for this vet visit to get this form filled out? This person over here is just going to walk on with their dog.”
I just want to say that if that were my name, I'd absolutely change my first name to Magna.
For a long time, Carta believed that educating people about how service dogs are a medical need was the answer. But the more and more time that passes, the more she’s realized that more public awareness doesn’t work if people aren’t willing to listen.
Words of wisdom, indeed.
There's a lot more at the link, of course. And yes, I'm aware that the solution would need to be more nuanced than "tighten the requirements," as I said above.
In the meantime, I'm avoiding flights as much as I can. Except, of course, for flights of beer, wine, whiskey, or fancy.
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