We're willing to bet "my dog ate my passport" doesn't work at Customs, but we're sure one couple wishes that were the case.
A Boston couple was put in a huge bind when their beloved Golden Retriever Chickie chewed up one of their passports days before they were set to leave for their wedding in Italy, reports say.
Groom-to-be Donato Frattaroli and his fiancée were at City Hall filling out marriage forms when it all went down. They returned hours later to find the passport destroyed.
"I'm just a little stressed," Frattaroli told local station WCVB.
He said he found the mangled passport in the 1-year-old pooch's bed. Chickie, whose name is short for Chicken Cutlet, knew she'd done something wrong.
"She kinda knew what she did and all of a sudden, she got really cuddly, you know, head on the lap kind of thing," Frattaroli told "Good Morning America."
The couple's flights are Friday, and their wedding is Aug. 31.
This is an especially hard time to need an expedited passport, as processing delays continue to mount. Americans have been scrambling to obtain international documentation as the U.S. Department tries to manage the post-COVID paperwork storm with understaffed teams and about 400,000 passport applications pouring in each week.
Lucky for Frattaroli, it seems his story has caught the attention of officials willing to help.
"Congressman [Stephen] Lynch's office and Senator [Ed] Markey's office have been super responsive. They've been in touch, at least with me and the State Department, to try to expedite things and get a new passport," Frattaroli told WCVB. "Keep my fingers crossed and, hopefully, everything will work itself out."
He said if he doesn't get his blue book in time for Friday's flight, his fiancée and their wedding guests will travel to Italy without him.
