This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The passenger was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed even though it was an evening flight.

Literally, as it turned out. The passenger was a squirrel. It hadn’t scampered on to the plane while people or bags were being loaded, or anything like that.

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A human passenger had brought the squirrel on board with her as her “emotional support animal”. When she refused to leave and take her squirrel with her, the police were called.

The woman and the squirrel were removed from the Tuesday evening flight by the police.

The passengers all had to disembark and reboard, causing a two-hour delay in the departure of Frontier Airlines flight 1612 from Orlando to Cleveland.

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Frontier said the passenger had noted in her reservation that she was bringing an emotional support animal – but she did not indicate it was a squirrel.

The airline says rodents, including squirrels, are not allowed. The company said the police were called when the passenger refused to leave the plane.

Police then requested that the other passengers disembark while officers dealt with the woman, who was eventually escorted into the main terminals.

The incident followed others where an “emotional support peacock”, Dexter, was barred from boarding a flight with its owner earlier this year and, of course, Pebbles, the emotional support hamster, which ended up flushed down a toilet. The name of the squirrel has not yet been released.

Frontier’s current policy bans “unusual or exotic animals”, including “rodents, reptiles, insects, hedgehogs, rabbits, sugar gliders, non-household birds or improperly cleaned and/or animals with foul odor”.