This one goes out to Mike the Musicologist, who was a big fan of Skippy when he was younger.
So there’s a family in the Spring area (near Houston) that has a special needs child. (According to the press coverage, the child is 16 years old; the nature of her special needs is unspecified.)
In order to assist the child, the family got a service animal for her.
And now the family’s HOA wants the kangaroo gone, asserting it is “not a household pet.”
I have a hard time deciding who to side with here. I don’t have a high opinion of most HOAs, but I figure they’re a choice you make when you buy a home. However, I question whether this is an enforceable requirement; what defines a “household pet”, and does Federal law trump the HOA restrictions when it comes to “service animals”?
On the other hand, getting your special needs child a vicious Australian animal (yes, I realize “vicious Australian animal” is redundant) as a “service animal” doesn’t exactly strike me as being the smartest thing in the world, either.
(Here’s the opening of “Skippy the Bush Kangaroo”. Apparently, you can get the first season on DVD, at least in some parts of the world.)
Edited to add: Actually, you can get the entire series