Sadie & JIm
Below is the link to a New York Times story about service animals - seeing eye dogs are service animals - and how the variety of service animals is increasing, resulting sometimes in controversy. A tenant says my monkey is trained to fetch my medication for me if I'm on the floor in a heap having a diabetic episode, the landlord says, are you kidding me? I don't allow monkeys.
But what's interesting to me is the case of Jim Eggers, on pages 2 and 3 of the Times article. Mr. Eggers is dangerously batshit crazy. I'm standing by that diagnosis, even though I'm not trained in psychiatry, even if it raises suspicions that I'm politically incorrect. "I have bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies...homicidal feelings, too", Mr. Eggers says to explain the gaps where his teeth have been smashed out and the scars on his face, and how he came to do a year on probation for threatening to kill the Archbishop of Saint Luis for various Catholic scandals in other places that the Archbishop had never seen. When Mr. Eggers starts to lose it, his vision blurs, he loses his hearing, his body tingles all over, and that's when he is taking a large bunch of antipsychotic pills on a daily basis.
Mr. Eggers came into possession of a parrot named Sadie. When Mr. Eggers is at home and feels he's going to go off the chain, he holds his head and shouts to himself, "It's OK, Jim! You're all right, Jim! Calm down, Jim!" Sadie, in the time-honored way of parrots, started to parrot those words back to him. Whenever Mr. Eggers started to get "agitated", Sadie started saying, "It's OK, Jim!...You're all right, Jim!"
And the voice of the parrot brought a beatific calm to the psychotic. His troubled mind was quieted, like a child in its mother's arms. This effect was so profound that Mr. Eggers had a portrait of Sadie tattooed on his arm, and then he got a bright purple backpack specially made to carry the parrot's cage, and wheresoever Mr. Eggers goes, he carries Sadie on his back with him, the bird squawking her mantra..."You're all right, Jim."
This may very well be great for Mr. Eggers calm, but I'm going to say that it would be shitty for mine. If I ever encountered a man with a purple parrot cage on his back, shaking and holding his head, the parrot in the cage repeating and repeating, "You're OK, Jim!", reproduced in portrait on his arm, I'd go straight to DefCon 1.
It may be possible I am not sufficiently sympathetic to the mentally ill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04Creatures-t.html?hp
But what's interesting to me is the case of Jim Eggers, on pages 2 and 3 of the Times article. Mr. Eggers is dangerously batshit crazy. I'm standing by that diagnosis, even though I'm not trained in psychiatry, even if it raises suspicions that I'm politically incorrect. "I have bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies...homicidal feelings, too", Mr. Eggers says to explain the gaps where his teeth have been smashed out and the scars on his face, and how he came to do a year on probation for threatening to kill the Archbishop of Saint Luis for various Catholic scandals in other places that the Archbishop had never seen. When Mr. Eggers starts to lose it, his vision blurs, he loses his hearing, his body tingles all over, and that's when he is taking a large bunch of antipsychotic pills on a daily basis.
Mr. Eggers came into possession of a parrot named Sadie. When Mr. Eggers is at home and feels he's going to go off the chain, he holds his head and shouts to himself, "It's OK, Jim! You're all right, Jim! Calm down, Jim!" Sadie, in the time-honored way of parrots, started to parrot those words back to him. Whenever Mr. Eggers started to get "agitated", Sadie started saying, "It's OK, Jim!...You're all right, Jim!"
And the voice of the parrot brought a beatific calm to the psychotic. His troubled mind was quieted, like a child in its mother's arms. This effect was so profound that Mr. Eggers had a portrait of Sadie tattooed on his arm, and then he got a bright purple backpack specially made to carry the parrot's cage, and wheresoever Mr. Eggers goes, he carries Sadie on his back with him, the bird squawking her mantra..."You're all right, Jim."
This may very well be great for Mr. Eggers calm, but I'm going to say that it would be shitty for mine. If I ever encountered a man with a purple parrot cage on his back, shaking and holding his head, the parrot in the cage repeating and repeating, "You're OK, Jim!", reproduced in portrait on his arm, I'd go straight to DefCon 1.
It may be possible I am not sufficiently sympathetic to the mentally ill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04Creatures-t.html?hp