Word: pet
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...that's just the start. Over the past year, the city has hounded dog owners to buy pet licenses, dispatched investigators to public garages in search of registration-sticker scofflaws and agreed to lease its Chicago Skyway toll road to a private company for $1.83 billion over 99 years...
Critics say the city is suffering from mismanagement and from the cost of Mayor Richard Daley's pet projects, among them the recently completed $475 million Millennium Park. "We don't want to cut services or raise property taxes. That's political suicide," says city alderman Ricardo Muņoz. "So the tighter the budget gets, the more creative we get." The latest budget draft hikes the sales tax from 8.75% to 9%, the highest among big U.S. cities. And Daley has backed an idea to fine people caught with small amounts of marijuana instead of arresting them--proof once again...
While going to court to resolve a pet- custody dispute may seem extreme, it is just one of the legal options available to protect animals and the people who care for them. Veterinary-malpractice suits, pet-cruelty cases and even landlord-tenant disputes over animals are reaching the courts as well. In New York City, Cindy Adams, a gossip columnist for the New York Post, has called for legislation that would ensure better conditions at dog kennels after her Yorkshire terrier Jazzy died, allegedly at a kennel. Some 23 states now allow enforceable pet trusts, in which people set aside...
...Some pet cases have reaped surprisingly large awards. Marc Bluestone of Sherman Oaks, Calif., won a $39,000 jury award last February after Shane, his mixed-breed Labrador retriever, valued by the court at $10, died just days after coming home from a two-month stay in a pet clinic. Although the suit took five years, cost more than $300,000 in legal fees and is on appeal, Bluestone says it was all worth it: "I can't get my baby back, but I did get justice...
...friend Sherlock Holmes, although Chabon never names him. Chabon's Holmes is long past his Baker Street prime: at 89, he has become a frail, eccentric, beekeeping retiree. Mystery comes looking for the aging detective in the form of a mute boy, 9, and his pet parrot (the symmetry is neat but not too: a boy who can't speak and a bird that can). Before long, the parrot is missing, a man is dead, and Holmes is back in the game...