Just gotta love New York City. . .

March 23, 2006
A Coyote Leads a Crowd on a Central Park Marathon

By JAMES BARRON
A coyote's romp in Central Park ended yesterday with a tranquilizer dart and a nap, but only after a messy breakfast (hold the feathers), a dip in a chilly pond and a sprint past a skating rink-turned-movie set.

There was also a final chase that had all the elements of a Road Runner cartoon, with the added spectacle of television news helicopters hovering overhead, trailing the coyote and the out-of-breath posse of police officers, park officials and reporters trailing it.

The coyote's pursuers joked that it even tried to turn itself in. It was hunting for a place to sleep it off after being hit by a single tranquilizer dart, and that place was a Fire Department dispatching station next to the Central Park station house overlooking the 79th Street transverse.

The coyote — named Hal by his captors, who said he was about a year old — woke up in a cage on the bed of a pickup truck carrying him out of the park. The city's parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, wasted no time in declaring that Central Park's 843 acres were once again a coyote-free zone.

This was a couple of hours after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had delivered some one-liners at Hal's expense. "Are New Yorkers in danger?" the mayor asked at a breakfast at the New York Public Library. "This is New York, and I would suggest that the coyote may have more problems than the rest of us."

Where Hal came from remained a mystery. Mr. Benepe said that he had probably been driven out of Westchester County. Older coyotes do that to young males at this time of the year, wildlife specialists said.

He speculated that Hal had made it down to the Bronx and trotted into Manhattan across a railroad bridge at Spuyten Duyvil—"the narrowest, safest crossing," he said.

But Mr. Benepe said it was also possible that Hal had dog paddled his way through the water beneath the railroad bridge. From there, he said, Hal probably meandered down the West Side to 72nd Street, where Riverside Park ends. And then, Mr. Benepe said, he turned left.

That was news to people in the neighborhood. "I see a lot of things pass this way," said Ralph Mascolo, a doorman at an apartment building on 72nd Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, "but never a coyote."

Maybe he took the crosstown bus. Laura Simon, the field director for the urban wildlife program of the Humane Society of the United States, suggested that he might have hitched a ride, though she was thinking of a garbage truck. "Sometimes animals appear in the strangest places," she said, adding that the mashed-up contents of a garbage truck would have been a tasty dinner for a hungry Hal, and obviously Hal had managed not to get mashed up himself.

However he got to the park, Hal apparently hung out there for several days. Sara Hobel, the director of the city's Urban Park Rangers, said he was first described as a hyena by someone who called from a taxi on the 66th Street transverse. That was over the weekend.

Ms. Hobel's boss, Mr. Benepe, mentioned a later report from a late-night dog walker who saw "something," maybe a wolf or a coyote.

By Tuesday, Ms. Hobel was thinking it was 1999 all over again, the last time a coyote was known to have been on the loose in Central Park — Otis, who now resides in the Queens Zoo. Someone from the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that runs the park, spotted Hal in the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, four acres of boulders and grass within sprinting distance of the Wollman Rink, the carousel and, if you are Mr. Benepe, your office.

Mr. Benepe went right over, as did Ms. Hobel. Soon the police joined the hunt for Hal, who by then had been named for the nature sanctuary.

Hal had "established a route" around the sanctuary, Ms. Hobel said. But around dinnertime on Tuesday — dinnertime for people if not for Hal — he made a daring escape, scrambling over an eight-foot-high fence and blasting by Ms. Hobel.

The search was called off Tuesday night. When it resumed early yesterday, a crew working on a movie called "August Rush" was busy at the Wollman Rink, just across a path from the Hallett sanctuary. Suzanne Kelly, from the film's wardrobe crew, saw Hal "going after this lady's dog." A small dog, a Westie, she said.

Hal "looked hungry, I thought," she said. "That's what I was worried about."

The posse chasing Hal cornered him by the Heckscher Ballfields, but he got away again. Hal retreated to the sanctuary, where a pile of feathers suggested that he had made a meal of a bird, probably a pigeon, Mr. Benepe said. After a quick swim across the sanctuary's duck pond, he sprinted past the rink, where an actress in a wig was doing figure eights.

The officers with the tranquilizer guns could not keep up with Hal. Ms. Hobel was confident he would resurface in the Ramble, and he did. And they got their coyote.

Mr. Benepe, said that the next event in Hal's young life was an examination by Dr. Mary Martin, the interim executive director of Animal Care and Control of New York City, a nonprofit group that runs the city's animal shelters, and Dr. Njeri Cruse, its medical director.

The examination confirmed that Hal was a he. It also showed that Hal had "nice clean teeth," Mr. Benepe said. And that Hal was coming to.

Mr. Benepe said the plan was for a wildlife rehabilitator to take Hal out of the city and, after some rest and relaxation, release him in a more coyote-friendly habitat.

Sewell Chan, Janon Fisher and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.