RICHMOND, Virginia. Michael Vick surrendered to U.S. marshalls yesterday to serve his jail term on federal dogfighting charges, but prison officials were unable to accommodate his request to begin his sentence early because no sitter has been identified to care for the Atlanta Falcons quarterback's other pets while he is incarcerated.
" . . . remember to forward Maxim subscription, turn down thermostat . . ."
"We've got a bigger responsibility than just locking people up," said Bureau of Prisons spokesman Tony Kilger. "Mr. Vick has a number of pets who could do serious damage to his carpets if left unattended."
Ant Farm
Vick's pit bulls and other fighting dogs have been given to new owners or euthanized in cases where they were determined to be too violent to be re-trained. Vick's other pets include two male cats, an ant farm, guppies and "Squawker", parrot that accompanied him to autograph shows.
"Don't jump the line--brawk!"
"Michael's not signing that junk, brawk!" Squawker says as federal Pet Enforcement Agent Tim Schaefer moves cautiously through Vick's mansion, taking an inventory of the animals who will need to be cared for. "Whoa--look at this," he says to his partner Clell Furnell, a former taxidermist who joined the PEA for the high hourly wage and federal pension that comes with it.
"What?" Furnell replies, before stopping in his tracks. "Jesus! There's clumps of fur everywhere," he says as the two cats disappear around a Barcalounger, screeching as they go.
"Here's your problem," Furnell calls out to Schaefer as he reaches the kitchen. "They're out of kitty chow," he says as he picks up an empty dish on the floor and fills it from a bag to which a Post-It note has been attached: "Do not fill bowl more than once a day--Thx, Michael."
Vick is said to be bitter that none of his former Falcon teammates has come forward to house-sit for him while he is imprisoned. "They was all into comin' over here to play foosball and watch the big screen TV before my life fell apart," Vick complained at his sentencing hearing. "Now that I've run out of cheese curls and the cable's shut off, they're nowhere to be found."
National Foosball League
After Furnell takes care of the cats, Schaefer enters the living room where he sees a large aquarium filled with blue neon guppies. He draws closer to watch the fish at play, then recoils in horror.
"Oh my God!" he screams.
"What's the matter?" Furnell yells as he comes running into the room.
"The mommy and daddy fish are eating their babies," he says.
Furnell looks into the tank and is mesmerized by the intra-family cannibalism taking place before his eyes.
"Do you think," he says to his partner, "we could get them on the Jerry Springer Show?"
ATLANTA, Georgia. Michael Vick may have thrown in the towel on federal dogfighting charges, but he's not going down without a fight on possible state charges, hiring "Seinfeld" lawyer Jackie Chiles to defend him.
"Michael, the charges against you are outrageous, salacious and bodacious!"
"My client is innocent of all charges," Chiles said on the steps of the Fulton County Superior Courthouse where he accompanied Vick, the Atlanta Falcons' quarterback, for his arraignment. "Those dogs were well-kept and well-fed, and they got Milk Bones for their daily bread," said the defense attorney who learned his trademark rhyming style by watching tapes of O.J. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran.
Michael Vick
Chiles appeared in four episodes of Seinfeld, representing Cosmo Kramer in a spilled-coffee burn case and a claim against O. Henry candy bar heiress Sue Ellen Mischke for distracting him by walking the streets of Manhattan wearing only a bra, causing an automobile accident.
"You say those dogs barked at you in a racist manner? I think we got a case."
Chiles gave a hint of his legal strategy to reporters, suggesting that the full story of Vicks' dogs had not been reported by the press. "Those dogs were racist," he asserted. "They would bark at a black man but not at white people. You know why? 'Cause white people got that wet dog smell."
Georgia NAACP President Edward Dubose: "Cochran's dead? Then let's get Jackie Chiles!"
Support for Vick has waned over the past week as lesser figures in the dog-fighting case have turned against him in exchange for plea bargains. Georgia NAACP President Edward Dubose has backed away from his early call for restraint, saying "Vick's a nitwit, and you must not acquit!"
WELLESLEY HILLS, Mass. This quiet suburb of Boston is home to the Maugus Club, one of the nation's few venues where badminton is played competitively, a source of pride to local residents. "People think of badminton as something you did in your backyard when you were a kid," says Douglas de Vere, a member. "But it's easily as rough as violent contact sports such as squash."
"Don't you ever touch my chew toy!"
Badminton traces its roots to ancient Greece but has struggled to gain acceptance in a marketplace crowded with less-dignified sports such as hot dog-eating and arena football. Still, aficionadoes thought the sport was on the verge of a breakthrough after the National Badminton League signed a two-year contract with ESPN14 to broadcast tape-delayed matches beginning this fall. That bright prospect is now on hold after revelations that top players may have sponsored after-hours cat fights in the club's basement bowling alley using animals hopped-up on performance-enhancing catnip.
All-Star Weekend Overhead Smash Contest
"It was a volatile mix that was bound to explode at some point," says Wellesley Chief of Police Ernie Colson. "You had young men with too much time on their hands between matches, and the code of the WASP"--white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants--"meant they couldn't blow their money on bling, so they spent it on their cats." Upper-class males in America are restricted by the by-laws of private clubs such as Yale's Skull and Bones from wearing any jewelry other than a wrist watch and a wedding band, although tie clasps are permitted between Labor Day and Christmas in some areas of New England.
"If Daddy sees my secret decoder ring, he'll kill me!"
Young badminton players, who can often make as much as $42 in an evening of play on side bets, thus found themselves without an outlet for their affluence until they began to satisfy their bloodlust with no-holds-barred matches between vicious felines such as "Okie", a mixed-breed refugee from an animal shelter, and "Rocco", a Sylvester look-alike who at the tender age of two years was already fighting and beating heavier cats twice his age.
In training.
"Your typical badminton player is an introvert off the court, which helps to explain why so many of them become ailurophiles," or cat-lovers, according to Power Badminton editor Milton Volpman. "These are guys who have trouble asking for a double-cup in Starbucks," he notes, "much less extra foam on their lattes."
The evidence.
As police removed catnip mice and other evidence from the club, this reporter approached Wilson Trammel, a top-ranked player, and asked whether reports that he was an ailurophile were true. "That's a damned lie," Trammel responded. "I never touched that kid."
ATLANTA, Georgia. Quarterback Michael Vick, who made an obscene gesture at Falcon fans last Sunday, says he will continue to express his feelings but will make donations to local charities for each crude hand signal he makes.
"Vick passed for single-digit numbers in the first quarter."
"Those fans were booing me--they got what they deserved," Vice said of the uplifted fingers symbolizing a sex act that he displayed to spectators as he walked off the field following last week's 31-13 loss to the New Orleans Saints. "We're the Falcons, and I gave them the bird," the colloquial term for the one-finger symbol.
"Teach--your children well."
Vick will make a $5,000 donation for each "bird" to the Georgia Audobon Society for the protection of endangered species including the bald eagle. "If I grab my #### or somthing like that, the money goes to a rape crisis center."
State bird of Georgia
Vick has threatened to drop his pants, a practice known as "mooning", if fans throw things on the field following a fumble or an interception. "If I do that, I'm gonna make a donation to the Christa MacAuliffe Educational Foundation."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
