Results tagged “urbanwildlife”

EV Grieve has a funny write-up and pictures of how 40 people lingered around not-yet-opened Madison Avenue restaurant Serge because an opossum was hanging around outside. (They are called opossums in the Western Hemisphere and possums in the Eastern.) Police officers create a makeshift barrier using folding chairs and mail crates. EV Grieve described the atmosphere, "So we all stood around like a bunch of dopes while the police officers figured out the best method of humanely trapping the possum. That left people time to theorize. 'How do you think he got here?' Well, said one man, 'I've seen possum in the Bronx.' Another man chimed in, 'I bet he took the subway!'" The opossum was rescued and, we assume, taken to Animal Care & Control. Back in 2004, ACC's director called opossums, "urban wildlife - wildlife that have adapted to an urban environment." The creatures are nocturnal and live in trees, so that's probably why we don't see them more often.

    

The pigeon keepers of New York have been in the spotlight recently, and now a new JL Aronson documentary, Up on the Roof, looks at the gentrification of Williamsburg through their experiences.

Up on the Roof follows several devoted pigeon breeders in one predominantly Latino section of Brooklyn through the rigors and rewards of a quintessential New York tradition. All along the waterfront, and throughout blue collar Brooklyn, pigeon fancying has been an active pastime for centuries, handed down from one group of residents to the next, and Williamsburg has long been the center of the action. But as with so many once blighted and now hip districts throughout the world, Brooklyn and Williamsburg in particular is being scrubbed of its old world character to make way for a new urbanism. This colorful, urban-wildlife doc considers what we lose in the process of urban renewal and treats the audience like an insider in an unseen and in many ways vanishing world.