Passengers confused by emotional support turkey on Delta flight

A passenger caused quite the stir aboard a Delta flight after photos of a turkey, which is reportedly registered as an emotional support animal, surfaced online.

Twitter user Moesha Mitchel originally posted images of the passenger’s animal earlier this month, The Telegraph reports.

However the pictures gained more attention this week after it was re-posted to Reddit by user biggestlittlepicke, who wrote: “My neighbour is a flight attendant. He just posted this photo of someone’s ‘therapy pet,’ on his flight.”

According to the National Service Animal Registry, an emotional support animal is a pet, which has been “prescribed by a person’s licensed therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist” and serves to bring “comfort and minimize the negative symptoms of the person’s emotional/psychological disability.”

Delta allows its travellers to bring their emotional support animals onboard and free of charge, according to their website. Dogs, cats and household birds can travel with you so long as there’s a medical documentation from a health professional to verify the service and the pets are well trained.

Naturally, the photo of the wild turkey sitting in its own seat on the plane was followed by some shrewd comments on Reddit.

“He is reevaluating his life and the sudden need to fly to Turkey,” wrote user Freefight.

Another user SoberHaySeed added: “Sometimes I think people are just trying to one up each other on how crazy their pick of emotional support animal can be.”

“First dogs, then cats, guinea pigs, miniature horses, 500 pound pot bellied pigs, and now a god damned turkey. Next it will be lizards and snakes and the government is going to shut it all down and limit it to dogs and miniature horses like they did for service animals.”

Top photo via Moesha Mitchel’s Twitter