My nephew worked for Delta back in the ‘80s and asked for a gig in West Palm Beach, FL. The guys there filled him in on all the weirdness involving retired New Yorkers. Everything from a whispered “Whaddya got for free?” to trying to ship a dead person in a wheelchair as a passenger.
What capped them all, and he says the guys swore it was true, was the one about “The Dog”.
They said the office got word that a dog was being shipped down from NY and to keep an eye out for it as it would be picked up that afternoon. Sure enough, the portable kennel arrives on the morning flight and they put it in a safe place.
Around noon, one of the guys says that they ought to give the dog some water and goes to check it out. He comes back, white-faced. Mother of God, the dog is dead! They figured it must have died of dehydration either on the trip down, or worse yet, from neglect at the airport.
Fearing for their jobs, they cook up a scheme to check with the local dog pound to see if they can find a match, hoping the switch wouldn’t be discovered until after it was off premises when they’d be off the hook.
They find one that “kinda” looks like the deceased, dump the old one and put in the replacement.
That afternoon an old lady comes in and asks for the dog. They bring it out, hoping she won’t notice the switch. She takes one look and starts screaming “That’s not my dog! That’s not my dog!”
The soon-to-be ex-employees try to B/S her that it is, until she tells ‘em “My dog is dead! I had him shipped down here so he could be buried in my cemetery!”
I always thought that would make a great sitcom scene, whether it was true or not.
I hope they were able to fish her dead dog out of the dumpster to keep her happy. What also would have worked would have been offing the dog from the pound and giving it to her. She was prolly so old she would not notice.