The most surreal thing I ever participated in, as a disability-assistant at O'Hare, was a woman in a wheelchair flying with her pet duck.

Big white duck, like in Charlotte's Web and other fine set-on-farms fiction. In a duffel bag. Wearing a harness, with a little leash clipped to it, and a diaper.

He was exceedingly interested and pleased with everything he saw, his head swivelling from side to side as I pushed his owner down the concourse towards baggage claim, making little half-swallowed 'quackquackQWAAquackquack' comments to himself under his breath.

Apparently, on the trip out, despite her having checked and triple-checked the legalities of flying with "a pet bird," the gate attendant decided to get shirty with her about how he was livestock and not going on HER plane. The passenger was firm but unyielding, and finally, with an air of wait-till-your-dad-gets-home, the attendant said it was up to the pilot.

The pilot looked the duck over and said, "I don't see why not." Then, after boarding the passenger early, asked if he could borrow the duck -- they put him in the pilot's chair and took pictures, then gave him a wings pin for his harness -- because it was his first time flying, you see. The return-trip gate attendant tried to pull the same thing, and when the pilot arrived, he looked the duck over again, phlegmatically, and said, "I flew the duck here, I'll fly the duck back."

Meg, Bear. Bear, Meg.

I do commend you to one another...

Pleezedtameetcha, and all.

My LJ is pretty much overwhelmed with OMGnewBABY posts, at the moment, but there's some pretty good stuff in my archives, if you're into that sort of thing.

My fuzzy brane, let me show you it. Wups :-)

Your grandfather's friend is full of win :}

Edited at 2009-03-04 11:15 pm (UTC)

Finding grassy spots for dogs to go wee on is actually nontrivially difficult, in most of O'Hare -- and the police dogs are SERIOUSLY trained to never even CONSIDER going on concrete. So on the arrivals level outside, there are tiny, sad, mostly-dead patches of grass beside the parking lot in the stygian depths, where there's never enough sun to actually GROW grass, to give the police dogs somewhere to 'go' without their handlers having to take them on the little interterminal train to the international terminal (where there are gorgeous, expansive lawns).

That sounds a bit like this story:
http://www.snopes.com/humor/jokes/pilotdog.asp