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ALL ABOARD THE HAMSTER SUBWAY. Meet Edie, a hamster who has become a web sensation in photos of him riding an amazingly accurate, scaled-down model of the 4 train. His owner, Victoria Balanger, works as an evidence photographer for the Manhattan DA’s office, reports the New York Post, and shot the photos on a model train car built to show jurors in a 1996 trial where subway bomber Edward Leary detonated his explosives. The model just happened to be, in Balanger’s words, “perfectly hamster-sized.”
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turtles on the tarmac delay JFK
Flights were delayed over an hour at JFK Airport yesterday morning when dozens of turtles crawled onto the runway in a massive breeding frenzy.
Port Authority workers were forced to scoop up 78 diamondback terrapins that the New York Daily News describes as being rather “randy.” The amphibians had crawled out of nearby Jamaica Bay in search of a spot to mate.
“Apparently, this is something the tower has experienced before,” Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters told the AP. “I guess it’s the season for spawning.”
Around 9:00 a.m., as planes sat waiting, the turtles were loaded into a pickup truck and returned to the bay.
Said Port Authority spokesman John Kelly of the delayed passengers, “Everybody had a good attitude considering it was turtles going off to hatch more turtles.”
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Moxie the lion cub is getting big
Okay, so this newly-released, Father’s Day-appropriate pic of Moxie the Bronx Zoo lion cub was only taken a couple weeks after Beast Blog’s first snaps. Still, look how self-assured the little lioness is!
Photo from WCS.
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Bronx Zoo Aardvarks Out and About
2-year-old male and female aardvarks make their official debut this week at the Bronx Zoo. They’re rooming with a pair of white-faced scops owls in the Carter Giraffe Building.
That thing in the background behind the aardvark above is a termite mound, a couple of which were installed in the exhibit and, we hear, are daily supplied with scores of fresh, live, tasty termites for the aardvarks to snuffle up.
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Snow leopards get new NYC home
The Sunday New York Daily News got a furrrocious exclusive about three snow leopards who have moved into new digs at the Central Park Zoo. (Video above.)
The cats came from the Bronx Zoo, which has long run a successful endangered leopard breeding program. They are a 12-year-old female, a 2-year-old male and a 2-year-old female.
In their new surroundings, which open to the public June 11, the cats split their time between a cliff-side waterfall and a lush hillside forest of birches and bamboo. To keep them active, their caretakers occasionally stash the scents of other animals in the exhibit to test the leopards’ hunting instincts. Says keeper Jeff Sailer, “It could be something as simple as straw that one of our rabbits in the children’s zoo slept in overnight. Leave some of that straw behind a bush or under a rock and, believe me, a snow leopard will know if it’s out there.”
While it’s early to be talking about cubs, exhibit designer Susan Chin tells the paper that the 2-year-old male is an intended mate for the 12-year-old female (proving that yes, leopards can be cougars).
“It will take them a while to get adjusted,” says Chin, “but at some point, we’re hoping it happens. We’ll have to come out here with candles and romantic music.”
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Exclusive: Raccoon pups relocated
One of the friends of Beast Blog is an NYC park ranger, and he had the pleasure of assisting these adorable raccoon pups one recent afternoon.
The babies were abandoned by their mother in a city park. A team of rangers used a cherry-picker to gently lift them out of a tree, and then our Ranger Friend and a partner drove them up to Westchester, where they were handed over to a raccoon specialist who will introduce them to a substitute mother and eventually release them back into the wild.
Here they are during during their ride in the Rangermobile. Another pic below.
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This cow is living the hay life
Molly, the cow who escaped a slaughterhouse and ran through Queens, was granted a reprieve and now resides in green, grassy comfort at 60-acre organic Long Island farm not far from the Hamptons. The New York Times naughtily adds that it’s a place Molly can “romp with a steer named Wexler.”
“She is here with her new boyfriend,” Rex Farr, co-owner of the Farrm (correct spelling) told the paper. “She can eat some good organic hay and hang around with a lot of her friends.”
Said friends include chickens from a crate that fell off a truck on the Tappan Zee Bridge last year, a pony from a defunct 4-H club, Wexler (who is almost 4 years older than Molly, just FYI, and has no horns), plus assorted goats and burros.
Some of the details about Molly’s great escape: reports indicate that a fence intended to corral her between a truck and the slaughterhouse’s cow pens proved no match for her ferocity. Pursued by slaughterhouse employees, she ran about a mile through city streets before she was apprehended by police.
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This cow ran for her life
The New York Daily News has breaking news about a cow that escaped a slaughterhouse today and hoofed it through Queens.
The cow broke out of Musa Halal Inc. and charged up 109th Avenue in South Jamaica this afternoon, darting through traffic in what the paper calls “a desperate attempt not to become barbecue.” One witness described the animal with these choice words: “It was bugging.”
The incident provided an excuse for the following literary flourishes: “bolting bovine,” “fleet-footed hoofer” and “break-away beef.”
Eventually, cops cornered the cow and tranquilized it. Even then, it reportedly managed to head-butt the butcher a few more times before being guided into a trailer.
Update: the New York Times’ City Room blog reports that at 3:30 p.m., police delivered the cow to a Brooklyn shelter operated by Animal Care and Control (where it was determined once and for all that the cow is a lady). An Animal Control spokesman says, “Our medical department is evaluating her. We got it set up so she has hay and water and all that good stuff.”
Even better, the spokesman says the agency has been in touch with Farm Sanctuary, a vegan farm in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York that takes in loose animals from NYC, and the cow won’t be going back to the slaughterhouse.
Further update: The cow has been named Molly!
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This whale took a wrong turn
The NYPD and Coast Guard came to the rescue of a humpback whale that had wandered into a busy channel near the Verrazano Bridge yesterday, says the Daily News. After an hour, the 30-foot mammal was free and gliding through the cold seas off Coney Island.
The whale was first spotted Thursday at 8 a.m., swimming south of the bridge. (Side note, it is believed to be the same whale that nearly beached itself on Rockaway Beach in Queens Wednesday night). It appeared to be flipping along merrily, if a little underweight, and the News describes it as “healthy but homesick.”
The Coast Guard set up a safety zone around the animal to protect it from passing boats, and experts say by the time the whale was guided back into deeper waters, it showed no signs of distress.
PS The News has some tres majestic footage halfway down the page HERE.
