MIAMI (WFLA) — A 21-year-old Florida woman said she was forced to flush her emotional support animal down the toilet after Spirit Airlines staff banned it from traveling with her on a flight from Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale, the Miami Herald reports.

Belen Aldecosea was flying home to have a golf-ball seized growth removed from her neck. She told the newspaper she called Spirit Airlines to make sure Pebbles—her pet dwarf hamster who is certified by her doctor as an emotional support animal — was okay to accompany her home.

But when she arrived to the airport several days later, she was told rodents weren’t allowed on board with passengers and Pebbles could not be stored in cargo.
Aldecosea changed her flight to buy time to figure out what to do with the animal, but with it being days before Thanksgiving, she was left with few options.

The college student said a Spirit Airlines employee suggested she let Pebbles free or flush it down the toilet. That’s when Aldecosea did the unthinkable. She flushed the hamster down the toilet.

Full story here.

Look, let’s not overlook that the fact that this evil airline attendant did a godawful thing. Putting this Sophie’s choice on a girl about to undergo surgery is pure evil. It’s a fucking support animal, not some random rat she found on the street gnawing on a carcass. This is one time you’ve just got to look the other way. Pull the old, “What dwarf hamster?” and shove her onto the plane. Fuck it. If she gets caught, that’s on her and you’ve never seen her before in your life. Case closed.

Now on to the real kicker in this story. Let’s talk about this fucking girl for a second. The dilemma here is free or flush, and who the fuck chooses flush? I get that this sucks: it’s not a situation any of us want to be in, but what kind of psycho do you have to be to choose option b here? I mean I know the odds aren’t great that your hamster survives being set loose in an airport, but the odds are better than if you go ahead and execute it by toilet bowl. Just let it go! It may not live long, but at least you’re not going to kill it!

I’m not even mentioning the possibility of finding someone on to just take your hamster and ship it to you. I’m underwhelmed by the apparent lack of effort and planning that happened between this girl being told that she couldn’t bring a hamster on a plane and her drowning it in an airport bathroom. Again, seems like there was a solution somewhere in here that didn’t result in a dead rodent and a sobbing girl.