Police Remove Resident Reptiles from Brooklyn Ark- I Mean Apartment

On Friday afternoon last week a special division of the New York Police Department, the Animal Care and Control unit, entered a public housing project in Crown Heights and removed a total of 13 unusual animals.

Included among the exotic critters removed in the raid were two alligators, two bearded dragons, five pythons, one boa constrictor, a scorpion, a tarantula and one gecko. Other not-so-quite unusual animals also occupy the apartment at 1625 Dean Street, but not necessarily any less scary to the neighbors.

The tenants also have several dangerous-breed dogs, which are also frightening and disturbing.

"They've got some big dogs," said Jeff Hayes, 43, a private contractor. "They've got some pit bulls up there. They need to do something," he said, speaking about the city-contracted animal protection agency, AC&C.

Lumber yard worker Klein Poe, 30, whose family lives below the unit, said he knew of three pit bulls living in the unit. "I hear them running back and forth over my head all the time. I hear it all night," he said.

Poe continued to explain that he was often afraid to leave his apartment with his two young children, a 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter because of the pit bulls. He added that the dogs’ owners did not take responsibility for them, either.

"There's urine and feces in the hallway and nine times out of ten, it was them," he said. "In these types of apartments who would want three dogs?"

Now it is clear why the tenants would not allow representatives of the New York City Housing Authority, the organization that runs the public housing complex, into the apartment to check on reported leaks coming from there. Given the number of animals kept in the apartment, and the deluge-like weather we have been having lately in New York, perhaps Noah and his family live on the fifth floor on Dean Street in Crown Heights?