Is It Just Me, Or Is Everybody Going Mad?

I see some interesting stuff in my line of work. At the moment, (since I know you are all fascinated by this), I am looking at the rules surrounding the movement of dogs from Ireland to the UK. There are some outdated oddities in the existing legislation, and so it has been drawn to my attention by an animal welfare activist at home. Another project  gets off the starting block...

I took a look at HMG's website that deals with this. It is great.

The fun starts with the very first sentence.  When travelling with your pet dog, cat or ferret, the rules you must follow depend on the country you’re going to or coming from.

Pet ferret?

Perhaps they may do things differently in some of the more remote parts of the UK, but pet ferrets? Please tell me it is not so.

It gets better. Much better.

 There are no restrictions on bringing pet invertebrates to the UK from other EU countries.

How in God's name can you have a pet invertebrate? If you tried to cuddle the bloody thing it would ooze through your fingers.

Sponges, I am told, are also invertebrates, so I guess they would at least serve some useful purpose. But how do you do all those things you would usually do with a pet, like talk to it or groom it? I suppose the advantages to having a pet sponge is that they don't eat much, and you dont have that painful moment when you have to explain to your child that a much loved pet has died.

Another advantage to bringing a pet sponge into the country, as confirmed by HMG, is that you don't have to get them micro-chipped or vaccinated against rabies!

https://www.gov.uk/take-pet-abroad/overview