Lions and tigers (but no bears) in Little Italy
Lions in Little Italy. David Moore
3:24 pm Sep. 16, 20101
This just in from Capital pal David Moore, of the Participatory Politics Foundation:
Tipped off by a neighborhood restauranteur, a small team set out from the office to confirm rumors of a lion and tiger appearing at the San Gennaro festival in NoLiTa / Little Italy.
On Mulberry Street, just south of Houston Street, approximately a dozen bystanders watched ambiguous construction activity at a set of three cages—one empty, one holding a caged baby lion (white-ish in appearance, with huge paws, as the saying goes, "big paws on the puppy," pacing back and forth), and a third with a box containing two tiger cubs. They were visible only by sticking their paws out of the box as far as they could.
Overall impression was very much that the lion's style was kinda cramped. The crowd seemed pretty uneasy and the guys working on the scaffolding of the cages seemed pretty agitated and frustrated. Inquiries to the most-engaged bystander, a gray-haired woman in her 50s, revealed that they were in fact dismantling the exhibit, possibly due to dedicated protests from an unknown animal-rights group, possibly due to the general gray-day bummer of keeping energetic animals in small cages and the total lack of children lining up to have their photos taken next to the cages.
Walking back, a diverse crowd of Manhattan police officers on fest-patrol were overheard expressing interest in walking up a block to see the animals before they left.
Check out more photos at Capital's Flickr page.
These animals are not meant to live in cages like this. BigCatRescue.org is a sanctuary in Tampa, FL that rescues big cats from situations of abuse and neglect. We must urge government officials to ban the private possession of exotic cats inorder to end the exploitation. Check out CatLaws.com to find out what you can do to help!