Custody spat over New Orleans escape-artist dog settled with visitation agreement
The wiry terrier named Scrim who had virtually all of New Orleans looking for him while he spent most of the previous year on the run – enduring a hurricane, a historic snowfall and other perils – landed in the middle of an adoption controversy among those who recently brought him to heel again and then wanted to keep him.
But in a video showing them sharing a sofa with Scrim, those who helmed an effort to bring the dog off the streets to domesticity announced a Solomonic solution that would keep all of them involved in his life – though his owner would be a local animal rescue shelter proprietor who had lost him in November and ultimately reneged on an earlier agreement for a key search volunteer to adopt him.
News of shelter proprietor Michelle Cheramie's change of heart had ignited a wave of social media hatred, including accusations of selfishness and her viewing the ungovernable pup as little more than 'a meal ticket' given the viral media attention his abscondence had generated.
Nonetheless, in their video with Cheramie and Scrim, would-be adopters Tammy Murray and Freba Maulauizada pleaded for a stop to the acrimony that had erupted in what seemed like only the latest tale to prove the intense passions that pets can inspire in Americans – and how nothing good can truly last on the internet.
'Please, please … do not hate,' Murray said in the video, after having described herself as 'devastated and really speechless' at her foiled adoption of Scrim in an earlier social media post that prompted the digital pile-on suffered by Cheramie. 'It does not get us anywhere, and it feels awful.'
Zeus' Rescues reportedly first took in Scrim after he was found astray in a south-east Louisiana trailer park on Halloween 2023. He bolted from Cheramie's home in November, doing so by chewing through a second-floor window screen and leaping 13ft on to a driveway.
Scrim was staying with Cheramie – who owns Zeus' Rescues – while he recovered from having earlier gone on the lam for six months after fleeing his then-adoptive family's yard.
He survived summer temperatures above 100F, Hurricane Francine in September and wounds that were suspected to have been inflicted by someone wielding an air pellet gun. He was also missing a chunk of ear as well as several teeth – and had a number of abrasions – when he was caught in October and placed in Cheramie's home to rest and await readoption.
After he skedaddled from Cheramie's home in November, the trail went quickly cold after the batteries in Scrim's GPS collar died within hours. People with nets and tranquilizer darts formed search parties that scoured the city for Scrim on both of his runs, but they came up empty-handed.
He eschewed baits of beef tripe and locally beloved Popeyes fried chicken while making fleeting appearances on doorbell camera videos across New Orleans, earning him international media coverage as well as a large online following within the city and beyond.
Eventually, on 11 February, an apparently hungry Scrim reportedly crawled into a narrow trap designed for cats, was recaptured and returned to Cheramie. She said a veterinary exam and X-rays indicated that Scrim had tapeworms and intestinal parasites but was otherwise in good health.
Murray at that point thought Scrim would be going to the home she shared with her partner, Maulauizada. The animal advocate and furniture designer, who had spent days and nights partaking in efforts to find Scrim, had submitted an application to adopt the dog through Zeus' Rescues and had gained approval.
However, on 18 February, Cheramie announced on Facebook that she had decided to keep Scrim for herself after he had bonded with her dog, Scooby, and had even been received warmly by her cats.
'I had a change of heart,' Cheramie wrote. 'I wanted him to be my dog.'
She acknowledged that Murray and Maulauizada 'took it hard', referred to 'a lot of hurt and pain', and expressed a desire for a time when 'we will all heal'.
Murray herself confirmed that was the case in her own social media statement, writing: 'No words. Devastated and really speechless. 10+ months of my life dedicated to bringing him home to safety. Even made it official and filled out an application and got approved only to be here … not my dog.'
Many sympathized with Murray. One user wrote Cheramie was acting 'selfish … and … isn't putting Scrim's needs before her emotions'. Another wrote: 'She sees him as a meal ticket.' And still another wrote to Zeus' Rescues: 'I think you have showed you can't properly take care of him. This should not be your dog.'
The Louisiana news outlet Nola.com reported that someone telephoned Cheramie and threateningly told her: 'You better never let me see you out on the street.'
The rancorous tone of the dialogue unwittingly set off by Murray's and Cheramie's dueling statements then evidently prompted both to collaborate on defusing it.
Convinced that Scrim was thriving in Cheramie's home, Murray and Maulauizada then essentially dropped their adoption claim to leave him in the care of the Zeus' Rescues proprietor, with assurances that they would still have roles in his life. They also made a conciliatory video with Cheramie and Scrim, on her lap, between them.
An intermittently teary-eyed Murray said in the video: 'Our focus is on Scrim. I hope everyone can celebrate with us that this dog is just doing wonderful.'
Apologizing for the statement that unleashed the backlash directed at Cheramie, she added: We really want this to end on a good note.'
Cheramie, for her part, denied Scrim's measure of fame was a factor in her love for him. She said she was grateful Murray and Maualauizada engaged in 'honest and open conversations' with her about 'a painful situation' – and wanted 'what's best' for Scrim.
'I love the fact that we can have this type of relationship and that we're here now doing this,' Cheramie remarked.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Record
32 minutes ago
- Daily Record
I've a major Rangers takeaway after remarkable tale and Celtic face competition kryptonite
Former Ibrox chairman Paul Murray sat down with the Hotline Live team in a blockbuster exclusive after playing a key role in the US takeover Above all else there was one major take away from Paul Murray 's guest appearance on Hotline Live the other day. And the tens of thousands of you who have watched the special edition of our online show already may have reached the same conclusion. This is a man, let's not forget, who has spent most of the last 15 years running around in various states of emotional exhaustion given the extent of his concerns for Rangers Football Club. And, over that time, each and every one of them were proved to be more than valid. Yet there he was on Friday afternoon, in a Daily Record studio, telling his remarkable story apparently without a care in the world. And that's the take away right there. If Paul Murray has entered a zen like state then it stands to reason that things as we know them are about to change. For the first time since late 2010, when Craig Whyte slithered into view, Murray now feels able to sit back, put his feet up and enjoy the show. Having played a key role in facilitating Andrew Cavenagh and his consortium to successfully conclude their takeover, it is Murray's firmly held belief that Rangers are finally out of the red zone and that his own work here is done. All of which should come as great comfort to his fellow supporters who have also been forced to fret over the wellbeing of their club for so long. But this sudden change in the mood music around Ibrox should also send out a signal to the side from across town which has proven itself to be so adept at staying ahead of the curve and making hay while the sun has been shining. So successful have Celtic become throughout this period of unprecedented domestic dominance that it's actually difficult even just to imagine any genuine threat being offered up to their supremacy. Thirteen titles out of the last 14 is testament to the scale of this monopoly and there are some from the east end of Glasgow who will be rolling their eyes at the very suggestion that Cavenagh's Rangers ought to be treated with renewed levels of respect. They've heard it all so many times before that they've become utterly bored by it. Many of them no longer even regard Rangers as a serious, worthy rival. On the contrary, the perpetually down on their luck neighbours are there mostly for their amusement. As far as they are concerned, after witnessing a long succession of rinse and repeat summer rebuilds, Rangers are nothing more than the boy who cried wolf. And if that remains the prevailing attitude this time around, even though the Americans have moved in next door, then that would be perfectly understandable too. Celtic have more than earned the right to see themselves as the rulers of this particular roost given the trophies that have been stock piled in the boardroom over the last decade or so as well as the bloated state of the club's bank balance. With Brendan Rodgers at the helm and this elite level manager eyeing up a fifth successive league flag, the champions ought to be more than robust enough to cope with whatever Cavenagh might have in mind. But, even so, they too probably ought to take heed of Murray's sudden switch in mindset. Because, if he is right and if Rangers really are about to become a relevant, credible force again, then it could come as a timely shot in the arm for their club too. What Celtic cannot afford is to become complacent or lulled into a false sense of never ending security. And competition is complacency's kryptonite. So perhaps on this occasion it might be healthy for the club and its hierarchy to assume that the ground might be about to shift beneath their feet after all. And to do something meaningful about it. For example, when Russell Martin confirmed during a TV interview last week that he is indeed serious about pursuing a deal for Crystal Palace winger Jeserun Rak-Sakyi, Celtic may have felt the first minor tremor. If Rangers are even considering entering into a loan deal for a player and taking on an obligation to buy Ray-Sakyi outright for a fee of around £8m, then it does indeed point to a significant raising of the stakes. The sheer size of the figures involved certainly suggests that, under Cavenagh and his friends from the San Francisco 49ers, Rangers will no longer be scrambling around down the back of the couch looking for some loose change whenever the transfer window opens up for business. Whether ultimately they thrash out a deal for the 22-year-old or not, the very fact that Martin has publicly declared an interest feels like a statement of intention. It shows that Rangers see themselves as credible operators in the recruitment market and that alone ought to be enough to up the ante where Celtic's current dealings are concerned. It may also demand a rush of urgency. For his part, Rodgers has been giving off some mixed messages over the last couple of weeks in terms of the strategy which is being deployed in the hunt for some much needed squad reinforcements as well as a handful of first XI upgrades. Having initially described Hayato Inamura as a 'club investment' and a new arrival who would probably be sent out on loan, the Irishman appeared to be putting some distance between himself and that particular signing. Reading between the lines, Rodgers seemed to be suggesting that there might be two separate tiers to Celtic's approach to recruitment this summer. One drawn up by the men above and one charted out by the manager himself. He made a point of pivoting back from that position last week in Como when he made a point of stressing that he and the club remain perfectly aligned in their priorities. Which is all well and fine. But it does beg the rather obvious question, why say such a thing in the first place? And it doesn't address the burning issue of a clear and obvious deficit in quality at the manager's disposal since the sales of Kyogo Furuhashi and Nicolas Kuhn as well as the injury which will keep Jota on a treatment table for the rest of this year. Nor the fact that the top flight kicks off with a visit from St Mirren in six days' time and there is less than a month to go before a £50m play-off for a place in the league phase of this season's Champions League. Celtic will do significant business before the window closes. Rodgers will almost certainly add some very pricey improvements to his starting line up. But the clock is ticking and this summer, for the first time in a long while, they can't simply assume that the neighbours will be in no fit shape to keep up.
Spectator
a day ago
- Spectator
The Cotswolds is a Potemkin England
Have you heard the one where the vice president of the United States and a lesbian former talk show host walk into a farm shop in Gloucestershire? No, it's not the set-up to a joke – it's just another Tuesday in the Cotswolds in 2025. Ellen DeGeneres has confirmed that she's staying put in the Cotswolds, where she's been holed-up since the 2024 US presidential election. JD Vance – now vice president under Donald Trump – is also planning on spending part of the summer there too. Two Americans, worlds apart, wind up in the same tiny sliver of England. One wants to grow heritage carrots. The other wants to dismantle the administrative state. Both think they've found something pure in the Cotswolds. They're just the most high-profile arrivals. The landscape is changing fast – not with tweedy old money, but with something slicker, richer, and often flown in by private jet from Jackson Hole or Montecito. US applications for UK citizenship hit a record 6,100 last year – up 26 per cent, with a noticeable spike around Trump's re-election. Not all of them are settling in the Cotswolds, but the symbolism is hard to miss. I live a few miles from all this, though not quite in it. My Wiltshire town sits at the bottom edge of the Cotswolds – included in old guidebooks, left out by the tourist board. Not an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, just a place of roundabouts, new-build estates and modest aspiration. The fantasy starts a few miles up the road – but you can feel the changes even here. Not long ago, the region was the playground of the Chipping Norton set – tabloid editors, minor royals, and David Cameron-era politicians, knocking back magnums of rosé behind the Big Green Egg. Today, that world looks parochial beside the star power and deeper pockets of the new arrivals. 'We got here the day before the election,' Ellen (net worth £300 million) told a thrilled audience at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham last week. 'And we woke up to all these texts with crying emojis. I was like, 'He got in.' And we're like, 'We're staying here.'' She's far from the only one. The area has become a sanctuary for the globally famous and fabulously rich – drawn not just by the scenery, but by the curated serenity on offer. Nowhere captures that better than Soho Farmhouse: less country club than lifestyle hallucination. Alongside Daylesford Organic and Estelle Manor, it forms a triangle of soft-focus luxury that now draws in everyone from Ryan Reynolds to Meghan Markle. This weekend, Eve Jobs's £5 million wedding took place there, attended by Kamala Harris, Olympic showjumper Jessica Springsteen, as well as Sofia Abramovich, daughter of former Chelsea owner Roman. Ellen, like a few celebrity Cotswolds transplants before her, treats the countryside as an Instagram backdrop – part Marie Antoinette fantasy, part photo op. Her foray into rural life mirrors that of Jeremy Clarkson's gentleman-farmer routine. Meanwhile, the real countryside is being hollowed out. More than 6,000 agricultural businesses shut down in the past year alone, many facing pressure from Rachel Reeves's planned inheritance tax reforms. Family farms – already battling drought, debt, and wafer-thin margins – now face the prospect of selling off land just to survive. Reflecting on her own foray into farming, DeGeneres told an audience in Cheltenham: 'We built a fence – and it was so ugly it ruined everything. Then I had to pay to take the fence down. The sheep just walk and go to the bathroom. That's all they do. I had to keep cleaning it up because our dog kept trying to get in it.' Mistakes like this are easily corrected. Ellen and her wife, Portia de Rossi, have already put their first Cotswolds home – Kitesbridge Farm, bought for £20 million in 2024 – back on the market for £30 million. Not because they're leaving, but because they've found something grander just up the lane. Behind the limestone façades lies a very different Cotswolds. Coventry University's 2023 Hidden Hardship project – based on diaries and interviews with residents of the North Cotswolds – found that experiences of deprivation were often concealed. Life can be a daily struggle: limited transport, insecure work, unaffordable housing – not crisis, but slow attrition. Stigma was a recurring theme. 'It's embarrassing,' said one participant. 'In the area that we live in…to say, 'I'm really struggling here.' You feel judged.' So is this what brings the vice president to Stow-on-the-Wold? The elegist of rustbelt decline, in search of England's own lost rural soul? Perhaps. But the real clue came last year, when on the campaign trail he declared that, 'London isn't English anymore.' Maybe the former tech bro is seeking the real England – rooted, white, orderly – and he thinks he's found it here. But the countryside he's holidaying in is no more secure than the one he left behind. England's rural communities, like America's, are hurting – not just from the pressures of global capital, but from the slow attrition of services, jobs, and meaning. As This Country creator Daisy May Cooper put it, reflecting on her Cotswolds upbringing: 'It's hell if you've got no money.' The Cotswolds still looks like England – hedgerows, pubs selling Sunday roasts – but what it offers now is something different. This is England as lifestyle product. A rural fantasy for the fundamentally dislocated – not from the land, but from the lives most people actually live. For the wealthy American visitor what you find here isn't Englishness. It's familiarity. I grew up in partially in California – not the redwoods, but in one of those lush southern California canyons, all eucalyptus, bougainvillea and discreet driveways. The kind of place where the private security approach if you go on a walk but forget to take the dog. Now, when I'm feeling nostalgic, I just drive a few miles north – and I've never felt more at home. The same green tea lattes. The same facile wellness speak. The same small-batch kimchi, turmeric kefir, locally sourced honey, and artisanal nduja nobody asked for. For some, it's a retreat from American dysfunction – a place that feels slower, safer, somehow more 'real.' For others, it's a postcard from a vanished past: tradition, order, a countryside untouched by modernity. These days, the Cotswolds offers a fantasy of England – perfected by borrowing from a certain vision of California. A Potemkin England, not alien exactly, but sealed off from reality. Not Oxfordshire so much as Napa with pubs.
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
'South Park' mocks Trump and emotional president can't hang
On July 20, the actual president of the United States of America posted an AI-generated video of former Democratic President Barack Obama being arrested, handcuffed and hauled away. That bit of dark, authoritarian humor is apparently a real hoot, and totally acceptable, given that Trump has not apologized or threatened to sue himself for $80 bazillion, or whatever the going rate is for things that violate the Man-Child of Mar-a-Lago's sense of decency. (As I typed "sense of decency," my laptop crashed because the machine's processor rolled its eyes too hard.) Envisioning the arrest of your political rivals is fine comedy, but apparently, the "South Park" bit went too far. White House calls 'South Park' a 'fourth-rate show' Trump was reportedly big mad about a cartoon version of nude Trump hopping in bed with Satan and the Comedy Central show's unflattering AI-generated desert scene. A White House spokesperson said: "This show hasn't been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention. President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country's history - and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump's hot streak." Opinion: Insecure Trump knows he'll never measure up to Obama. And it kills him. The "fourth-rate show" that "is hanging on by a thread" just got a five-year deal worth $1.5 billion from Paramount. To put that in perspective, "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone got about 94 times more from Paramount than Trump did when the company paid him $16 million to settle a ludicrous lawsuit against "60 Minutes." 'South Park' is way more popular than Donald Trump is And the same day the White House boasted about Trump delivering on promises, Gallup released a poll showing the president's approval rating hitting 37%, the lowest of his second term, and a majority of Americans disapproving of his handling of virtually everything, from immigration to the economy to the federal budget. Opinion: Trump is unpopular, polls show, and he's building an America most Americans hate But who cares about numbers or facts or whether the bar for presidents should be set slightly higher than a cartoon famous for a singing piece of poop? The bottom line is that in Trump's America, we have a new way to define comedy: A show mocking naked Trump = NOT FUNNY! A fake Obama arrest video = FUNNY! I'm going to distill that definition a bit more, since the picture seems crystal clear: Anything making fun of Trump = NOT FUNNY! Colbert canceled, Behar threatened and 'South Park' condemned We've recently seen late-night host and relentless-Trump-skewerer Stephen Colbert have his show suspiciously canceled by Paramount. After comedian Joy Behar mocked Trump's transparent jealousy of former President Barack Obama on "The View," the White House released a statement saying Behar "should self-reflect on her own jealousy of President Trump's historic popularity before her show is the next to be pulled off air." Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. Only Trump can decide which jokes are funny, America Do you get it, comedians and satirists of America? You shall dispense only Trump-approved humor-jokes or face the wrath of the guy "South Park" showed stumbling naked across a desert with a teeny talking penis. You may create videos fetishizing the arrest and detention of Democrats; you may, as Trump often does, disparagingly pretend you're a transgender weightlifter; you may make jokes about alligators eating migrants. That is all hilarious. Pure comedy in Trump's MAGAmerica. But if you joke about the president or criticize him in any humorous way - NOT FUNNY!! And you will be held accountable. Particularly if you point out that President Trump is so thin-skinned he got mad at a cartoon. Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @ and on Facebook at
