I am completely against this, but not because I have a problem with people owning squirrels, or taking the side of a landlord, etc.
It is the twisted concept of “support animal” that has taken hold.
It appears now that you can have any animal or object designated as a “support” thing, and that means (or is going to shortly mean) that you will be able to take it anywhere you want to take it.
Planes. Buses. Cafeterias. Restaurants. Hospitals.
So, if your support thing is a large box of insects such as spiders or cockroaches, you will (or will be able to in the near future) be able to take them on the plane with you.
People think I am merely being pedantic for painting this scenario, but I have come to believe that if you can conceive of something, it is nearly certain that it can happen.
Look at the Equal Rights Amendment back in the late Sixties and early Seventies. It was defeated nearly single-handedly by Phyllis Schlafly who took elements of the proposed ERA and said “If you take component X in the ERA, it could result in situation X, Y, or Z.”
Her critics would say she was insane and stupid for saying X, Y, or Z would ever happen.
But it turns out in the end, that many of the things she said would happen, did happen as a result of legislation that was passed to achieve the same results that the ERA would have obtained.
These are things that normal people are aghast at, but radical, feminists, and deviants think are perfectly acceptable.
In mandatory training at a hospital, one is asked a question about how to deal with a person who enters the hospital with a support animal that doesn’t really seem to be a support animal, but is instead wearing one of those stupid things you can buy in a pet store that simply says “Support Animal” and some even come with some bogus certificate.
The answer is, you pretty much let them be.
The way I see it, it becomes a case of what is not forbidden becomes mandatory.
For the record, I like squirrels (and chipmunks too) as long as they aren’t burrowing into my attic. Then, they are an enemy.
I understand their destructive nature in many ways, but I find them interesting and entertaining.
I have one of those bird feeders with an electric motor in it, so when they climb on it, it spins them around, but birds can land fine. You have to charge the battery occasionally.
It is hilariously funny when they first encounter it, and the internet has great videos that show tenacious squirrels hanging on for dear life, refusing to let go. I have a brilliantly good one where a squirrel is hanging on by its back feet with its torso swinging through the air as it travels around the feeder four times before it finally gives up and lets go to fly through the air.
The squirrels learn very quickly not to climb on the feeder, and it sticks. I have an older model outside my office window, and I haven’t had to charge it in about six months now. They go up the tree like they are going to go on it, then a figment of memory seems to pop into their heads, and they go back down the tree to feed off the ground. I figure I will let them forget and allow them to feed for a few weeks, then recharge the battery and film them again as they relearn...:)
Hospitals: Most hospitals allow any ESA on property - individual hospital policy applies. All hospitals are required to permit service dogs where any member of the public is permitted.
Buses, cafeterias, restaurants: Under federal law, service dogs are permitted in and on all of the above. ESAs are not.