by Justice William W. Bedsworth

If you Google “emotional support peacock,” you will see a picture of a peacock United Airlines refused to allow on one of its airplanes. See, that’s why you read my stuff: because without me, it never would have occurred to you to look up “emotional support peacock.”

And now I’m a little worried that the column may have peaked too soon. I mean, we’re barely a hundred words in and you’ve already seen something you never saw before: a celebrity peacock.

But let’s keep going. The pressure’s off. Everything after this will just be frosting on the cake, right?

The peacock in question was denied access to a United flight even though its owner claimed it was an “emotional support animal.” Back in the early days of the Americans with Disabilities Act, emotional support animals were a big hassle for the airlines, which were desperately trying to deal with emotional support pigs, squirrels . . . even a turkey. Can you imagine having the aisle seat next to someone with a live turkey in their lap?

Much time, effort, and legal horsepower¹ was devoted to years of refinement of the ADA. The result is that the “emotional support” concept has been refined almost to the point of elimination, and the only animals the airlines are required to accept now are trained “service animals.”

And trained service animals must be dogs. No cats, no pigs, no turkeys, no peacocks, no squirrels. ²

Oh, and miniature horses. Did I mention miniature horses? That’s the only exception to the dog-ness requirement for your service animal. It must be a dog . . . or a miniature horse.

That’s right, the ADA recognizes miniature horses³ as acceptable service animals. ⁴ I’m not sure how this would be applied to the airlines, but if you’re running a restaurant or a china shop and someone comes in using a miniature horse for guidance or support, you’re required to make a reasonable accommodation for them.

Thus endeth today’s reading of the gospel. The good news is that years of legal refinements have made your next airplane journey safe from the possibility of an emotional support snake in the next seat over. Next time somebody says something bad about lawyers, remind them of that.

But that pesky “emotional support animal” term has lingered in the public consciousness. Last month, four males⁵ aged 16-24 rode their horses into a Walmart in Baker, Louisiana. They cantered around the frozen food aisle and the hardware for a minute and then disappeared into the sunset.⁶ When arrested, one insisted his horse was his emotional support animal, so Walmart had to let it in.

Ironically, while the “emotional support animal” argument is dead on arrival, a “trained service animal” argument might have succeeded . . . if only these had been miniature horses. They weren’t, though, so I think this argument by the “cutthroat cowboys”⁷ is gonna be a loser.

But for now, let’s go back to the beginning of this public service announcement disguised as a column and talk about how I happened to be reading about an emotional support peacock. It’s because I started out reading about emotional support tigers. Seven of them.

Tigers.

This just gets weirder and weirder, doesn’t it. This happens to me sometimes.

Sometimes I start writing these things and they just take on a life of their own. The column decides where it wants to go, and I get dragged along behind like Little Orphan Annie trying to walk a brace of great danes.

This time I got dragged to Pahrump, Nevada. Yes, there is a place called Pahrump. It is not the sound of a successful Heimlich maneuver. Nor is it the punchline of a joke about the President.

It’s a town in southern Nevada, about halfway between Las Vegas and Death Valley.⁸ For reasons still unexplained by modern science, some 40,000 people live there.

And seven tigers.

Guy named Karl Mitchell owns the tigers but had failed to update his exotic animal permit and the authorities came to take his tigers away. In the process, they also arrested him for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Karl’s defense was that these were emotional support tigers. It’s unclear just how that would exempt him from the permit requirement, but if we lawyers can get miniature horses into the ADA, it would perhaps be unwise to bet against us getting around a Pahrump permit requirement. If it weren’t for the felon with a firearm thing, I might have made Karl no worse than even money in this contest.

There will, of course, be lawsuits.

But what I really want you to focus on in this story is not Karl. I want you to think about the poor sheriff’s officer who was assigned the task of putting together a group to go seize the tigers.

“I need volunteers for a permit enforcement action. We need to go seize seven tigers from an armed felon. He’s old and crotchety and has sued us before, but there probably won’t be a hail of gunfire because there’s only the one guy.

“I’ve purchased leashes for the tigers, but if you have roping experience, that might be helpful. And we’ll need to transport the tigers after we gather them up, so if you have a truck, bring it. Oh, and if anyone knows a vet or an emergency room doctor or a good lawyer, bring them along, too. Just sign the clipboard, and meet me back here in an hour.”

I don’t know what you have to do today, but I guarantee you it won’t be any harder than getting signatures on that clipboard.

By the way, according to NBC news, the tigers will be taken “to an undisclosed sanctuary where they will be held until ordered to be released.” This concerns me.

I don’t know enough about this dispute to take sides. As the owner of four emotional support cats and an emotional support dog, I certainly understand the attraction of animal companionship. On the other hand, I reach for my checkbook every time one of those abused animals appeals shows up on my television. I’m very much in the “if you’re gonna have an animal, you have to take care of it” camp.

So I’m all for putting the tigers in a “sanctuary.” I want them fed, watered, pedicured, pampered in every reasonable way. But I’m not fully in favor of having them “released.”

I’ve already indicated Pahrump would not be my first choice for a visit. But if there are going to be seven tigers wandering around that desert town, I think I’d rather book a room in a volcano, thank you very much.

They may want to reconsider the release thing. Watch this space. There’ll be another public service announcement if I get further word on the release of the Pahrump Seven.

BEDS NOTES

1. Remember this word; you’ll have reason to think of it again in a few paragraphs.
2. All of which people tried to bring onto planes in the years the ADA was being sorted out.
3. No, these are not ponies, these are miniature horses. Smaller than ponies. About as tall as a baseball bat.
4. I would like to meet the miniature horse lobbyist who pulled this off. All the animals in the world and the only two recognized are dogs and miniature horses. That’s some impressive advocacy.
5. Why is it always my gender that does the really stupid stuff?
6. Well, actually, there was no sunset. The sentence just kinda got away from me.
7. That’s what they called themselves. Because they rode horses into a Walmart. Jeez, how did I get roped into this gender?
8. Hell and high water, the devil and the deep blue sea, Scylla and Charybdis, a rock and a hard place . . . pick your replacement phrase here. I’d prefer any of them to halfway between Las Vegas and Death Valley.

William W. Bedsworth was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal until his retirement in October 2024. He's written this column for over forty years, largely just to get it out of his system. A Criminal Waste of Space won Best Column in California in 2019 from the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA). His last book, Lawyers, Gubs, and Monkeys, can be obtained through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Vandeplas Publishing. He can be contacted at heybeds@outlook.com.