Has anyone lost a well dressed, bilingual elephant in Brooklyn? Babar, yes that Babar, has been discovered in Bay Ridge, and his new human friends have posted this alert on Craigslist: more ›

The couple that lost the stuffed monkey that they've been raising like a son for ten years was reunited with Bongo over the weekend, and the NY Post has the exclusive! And check out those exclusive photos, too! They seriously make it even more impossible to figure out if this whole thing is heartwarming, or just depressing. more ›

We received an excited email from a reader stating: "A friendly exotic bird was saved by New Yorkers on the UWS Saturday in freezing temperatures"... with a link to a website retelling this story from the rescuer: "I was on the UWS on Saturday and noticed this bright orange/green/blue bird standing on the sidewalk chirping. It looked pretty out of place..." more ›

The missing 34-year-old medical student who seemed to disappear without a trace after being kicked out of her Midtown apartment was found safe and sound at the West Side YMCA. Aimee Angle-Zahn, who reportedly has epileptic seizure disorder as well as a "gullible" and "clueless" nature, was found after cops looked at the activity on her debit card. more ›

Talk about a Prince Charming, fuggedaboutit! This guy found a Christian Louboutin shoe somewhere in the vicinity of 96th Street and Broadway (where this flyer is posted) and A) identified it as an expensive shoe (these puppies probably cost about $695), and B) went to the trouble of trying to find the woman who lost it. more ›

For four days, friends and family had been searching for Thomas Wopat-Moreau, a 22-year-old East Village resident who went missing after leaving a party in Dutchess County. A friend said, "I think he tried to go home and something happened on the way. An entire car vanished, it’s not just a person. No one’s seen either." And what happened was he lost control of his car and crashed off the Taconic State Parkway about 40 miles outside of Albany, landing 480 feet from the highway. more ›

Hey did you lose a suitcase containing $78,383 or are you very good at guessing what items you have never seen look like? If so, Craigslist is your winning ticket! This week a poster said he found just such a suitcase filled with money right on the Lower East Side (full ad after the jump). more ›

Brianna Zani—the 21-year-old who first went missing one week ago today, only to be brought to Woodhull Hospital and promptly escape—has been found. Her family was readying to make a desperate plea on CNN last night when Zani showed back up at her Bushwick apartment at 5 p.m., unharmed. more ›

Delaware police have tentatively ID'd a little girl found Sunday in a men's bathroom stall at a Shell station in Delaware. They believe she's about 2 years old and that she comes from New York or New Jersey, but haven't released other details. According to the Daily News, the child's hair was "pulled up on top of her head, and she was wearing a puffy tan winter coat over a purple shirt with small flowers printed on it. She also was wearing blue jeans with pink, white and purple sneakers with purple laces and white ankle socks." The AP says she's been placed in foster care family while police search for her family. more ›

The body of a man whom investigators believe may have been a stowaway was found in one of the landing gear compartments of a plane in Tokyo. Last night a mechanic found the man's body while performing maintenance on the Boeing 777-200; the plane had originated in New York as Delta Flight 59. There's little information about the dead man, who has been identified only as a 5'7" male with dark skin, clothed in a long-sleeved plaid shirt and jeans. The area he was found in is inaccessible from the inside of the plane, and does not have any air conditioning or pressurization. more ›

This isn't really as exciting as the recent MIdtown macaw rescue, but last week the Brooklyn Paper spread the word that an African Grey Parrot had gone missing near Flatbush Avenue in Park Slope. The bird—named Gracie—belonged to Lora Myers, who kept him as a pet for 12 years. more ›

Things not to leave behind in a taxi: $500,000, 184-year-old violins on loan. The NY Post reports on one musical prodigy, Hahn-Bin, who did just that yesterday after a trip from Lincoln Center to Chinatown. He called 311, who "put him in touch with NYPD Detective Ming Lee and Taxi and Limousine Commission officials Azam Kifaieh and Sam Shady. Hahn-Bin then waited—for 15 tense hours—as the NYPD and TLC scoured GPS records to figure out which cab driver dropped him off" (though CityRoom reports it only took one hour to actually track down the instrument). The driver was contacted while off-duty at his home in New Jersey, and told them he had indeed found the instrument, which Hahn-Bin has since been reunited with. TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus declared musicians to be the most forgetful fares, saying, "There are enough instruments left in taxis to start a small orchestra." Official protocol for cabbies who find an item in their cab is to take it to the nearest police precinct "without delay." more ›

Employees at a laundromat in Morningside Heights found a four-feet-long, nine-pound boa constrictor curled up between bags of clothes this morning. Animal Care and Control officials say the snake was safely removed by police and taken to its offices in East Harlem for a checkup. Jose Ortiz of Animal Care and Control tells NY1, "It's a very timid snake, not an aggressive snake at all." Yeah, that's probably because it was napping while digesting Snuggle. Animal Care and Control says the boa will be sent to a reptile sanctuary upstate and will eventually be released back into the wild. The incident is only the latest in a long line of surprise snake discoveries in the city; in June a Bronx woman discovered a five-foot long, tan-colored snake under her dining room table; in February two boys found a boa between the couch cushions in their Bensonhurst apartment, and who could forget the python in the toilet? Not us; that's why we're sleeping on our office desks in diapers and hand-washing our clothes! more ›

A woman whose wallet was stolen from her purse in Central Park in 1982 finally had it returned to her last week after a worker found it stuffed inside the hollow of a dying cherry tree near Rumsey Playfield at East 72nd Street. The cash was gone (except for a single penny) but the discovery was essentially a time capsule for Upper East Side resident Ruth Bendik, a 69-year-old health care professional. She vividly recalls realizing her Reagan-era wallet was lifted one day while in she stood in a crowd watching the New York City Marathon. Fast-forward to last Tuesday, when a tree-care supervisor for the Central Park Conservancy found it after he took down the tree, cut it into large pieces, and began to root around inside a hollow to finish the job. The blue leather wallet was encrusted in dirt but still contained retro credit cards from Bell Telephone and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Bank, as well as Bendik's employee ID from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (right). Bendik's $20, however, was nowhere to be found. The wallet was turned over to the police, who returned it to Bendik the next day, according to the Post. The thief remains at large, but the trees are obviously mixed up in this somehow. more ›

A 19-year-old St. John's student who had been missing since January 20 was reunited with her family yesterday. Erica Desai was last seen by a cousin who dropped her off at a dorm, and her family worried that something might have happened to her. A surveillance tape seemed to show a woman of Indian descent using her ATM card, raising questions whether she was missing or AWOL. Now, NY1 reports that Desai "called police late last night after seeing herself on television...Police say she was embarrassed about being expelled from school" for using someone else's credit card "...They also say she's been riding the trains for days." Desai initially told police she was abducted, but then admitted to running away. more ›

10-year-old Kemoy Gourzang was walking to school in East Flatbush Friday morning when he found a wallet on the sidewalk stuffed with over $500 in cash. But instead of doing what we would have done at his age—blow it all on Transformers and Garbage Pail Kids—Gourzang took the wallet to his school's principal, who used a business card in the billfold to contact the owner. The unidentified man was so relieved to have it back that he gave Gourzang a $100 finders fee, which the honorable little lad promptly invested on a video racing game called Midnight Club 3. "I was pretty excited," he tells the Daily News. "I went straight to Toys 'R' Us." But Gourzang still has $50 left, and is apparently going for the title of sweetest little boy in all the land: The rest of the money will be spent on Valentine's Day, "to buy a Teddy bear with angel wings, milk chocolate and maybe a necklace. For my mom." more ›

On Tuesday, Kola, a one-year-old pit bull mix, had successfully chased away a burglar who attempted to break into her family's New City, NY home. When her owners came home, they discovered a "window was broken" and "muddy footprints in the house." Nothing was taken but Kola, who was rescued from a dog-fighting ring and adopted by the Rosen family earlier this year, was missing! And the Rosens were especially worried since Kola has an infected leg and needs medication. Last night, the pup surfaced in NJ. Someone found her tied to a pole at a Costco and took her to a shelter, where Mitch Rosen ID'd her and took her home. more ›

Former TV producer Julie Horner Lankamp was found dead in her Gold Street apartment Tuesday with "her crying young daughter clutching her legs," as the Daily News sensationally puts it. Relatives say they hadn't spoken with Lankamp since Sunday and police don't know how long the two-year-old had been stranded with her mother's body, which had begun to decompose. Lankamp had a broken jaw, bruises, and dried blood pooled near her nose and mouth, but the city medical examiner doesn't believe Lankamp's injuries were caused by a beating. An empty glassine envelope with cocaine residue was found near her corpse, and investigators say her injuries may have been caused by a fall after a drug overdose. Results of a toxicology report are pending, but in the meantime police are looking to interview her ex-husband, who was arrested at the end of last year "for attacking her with a chair while using their child as a human shield," a source tells the News. more ›

A Queens woman has just joined the growing family of New Yorkers who've found foreign objects in their fast food. Last week a man found a serrated knife in his Subway sandwich, now a 25-year-old Julisa Caba says she discovered a metal screw when she bit into a McDonald’s apple pie. A Health Department spokesman tells the Daily News, “The McDonald's [on 21st Street in Astoria] will receive a full sanitary inspection, with additional focus spent on the possible source of the screw.” Franchise owner Michael Giunta may also be in trouble for failing to factor in the screw when displaying the apple pie’s calorie info. more ›

The mystery of what happened to 25-year-old Columbia student Toby Cohen is still somewhat of a mystery, even to him. After word came in that he was found yesterday, the NY Sun is reporting on some of the finer details today. When the family called Columbia with fears he'd gone missing, they found out their son had withdrawn in the last month. Cohen, who had left his epilepsy medication at home the night he went missing, was discovered in upstate New York. More specifically, he was "found swimming in a reservoir in Carmel, N.Y., with bruises on his face and legs and disoriented from missing doses of medication." He has no recollection of how he got there, or of any recent events, but is expected to make a full recovery. more ›

Earlier this morning we pointed towards the Daily News article reporting a missing Columbia student. The 25-year-old Toby Cohen had allegedly left his girlfriend's apartment this past Sunday night, took $200 out of an ATM and headed back to his Washington Heights home. He then left his wallet and medication for "a life-threatening medical condition" in his apartment. After two frantic days, a friend of Cohen's just told us some good news -- Cohen has been found healthy, and his family is currently picking him up. No other details have come out yet, but it's nice to hear the story didn't end tragically. more ›

Books can be the perfect place to stick an orphaned piece of paper; bills, to-do lists, unsent notes often get discarded in between pages -- so it's not a surprise when an unknown scrap comes floating out of a used book. Adam Tobin, owner of Unnameable Books in Brooklyn, has now created a display inside his store for just such found objects.

“It’s a motley assortment,” he said. “We’ve been doing it for about two years since opening the store. The display quickly took over the back wall and now it’s spreading to other places, and there’s a backlog of stuff that we haven’t put up yet. There are postcards, shopping lists, and concert tickets but my favorites are the cryptic notes. They are often deeply personal and can be very moving.” more ›

"About halfway through, I bit in and felt something hard and crunchy." That’s what NYU senior Benjamin Jarosch declared after eating part of a found muffin, and he wasn’t talking about a walnut: his innocuous-looking blueberry muffin was stuffed with three razorblades. Jarosch and his buddies had discovered the muffin, along with four others, wrapped in tin foil, upon arriving in the classroom. more ›

This doesn't happen in New York all too often: the reading glasses pictured were found on March 21st on Prospect Park West, and the person who found them decided to practice some internet chivalry rather than cash in on the brand name spectacles. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on East 39th St. in Manhattan, a large fight on 2nd Ave. in Manhattan, and a child in cardiac arrest on Pitt St. in Manhattan.
• Police in Nassau County are conducting an active homicide investigation in New Cassel, after they were called to a home where three children--all under the age of seven--were found dead in a room. Their mother has been hospitalized.
• Ripples of Kosovo's recent independence are being felt in New York City's Central and Eastern European immigrant communities.
• Thousands of students fasted for a 30-hour period over the weekend to raise awareness of world hunger.
• To celebrate the system's 100th anniversary tomorrow, everyone can ride the PATH trains to and from NJ for free.
• A large number of the panels being removed from the stained glass window at American Airline's JFK Airport Terminal are going to the group lampooned as a cult that recruited members as they cleaned one's carpet for free in an episode of Seinfeld.
• A Greyhound bus traveling from New York City to Syracuse and then across the border to Toronto flipped over in northeastern Pennsylvania early this morning. 41 of the passengers were treated at a hospital and released.
• Grammy Award-winning singer Rihanna is working with an international bone marrow donor network to help Lisa Gershowitz Flynn, a New York City mother of two young children who has leukemia.

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After the discovery of a woman's body on the lawn of the United Nations building, the police have identified the woman as Maria DiBiase, who worked with the Austrian consulate. According to the Daily News, DiBiase "apparently jumped after showing up for work at the UN early Sunday." more ›

When you're found to be making pipe bombs amidst an apartment arsenal of weapons and then confess to painting swastikas in your Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, expect the book to be thrown at you repeatedly. Ivaylo Ivanov was charged with over 100 criminal counts for his activities. more ›