The Scourge Of Occupy Chestnut Street

Because ultimately they’re just rats with good P.R.:

They are marauding gangs of troublemakers who set fire to cars, cut electrical wires and cause power outages, evading capture by scaling walls and climbing trees.

. . .

“It’s like Occupy Wall Street here,” lamented [the] president of the under-siege co-op at Glen Oaks Village. “It’s gotten worse in the past six months. We’re getting calls that they are in people’s apartments.”

And then the kicker:

But while the Queens co-op residents being terrorized by the daredevil vandals say they know exactly who their tormentors are, they insist that they’re helpless in stopping the crime wave — because the suspects are sex-happy squirrels.

And Now You Really Have Seen Everything

Otter found, or more accurately, got hit by a car on Staten Island:

But how a 25-pound North American River Otter made his way into Bloomfield waterways before being hit by a car on South Avenue sometime Saturday is as much of a mystery as whether there are more otters playing and swimming in borough streams and estuaries. The semi-aquatic animal probably thrived here centuries ago, but the population virtually disappeared with urbanization, pollution and over trapping by early settlers: Until now, there had never been an otter sighting recorded in New York City, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Irene: Tree Assassin

Three is, of course, a trend: The “controversial” Mansion Elm in Brooklyn Heights, a “symbol of survival” against development in the East Village, and even a “vagina tree” in McCarren Park all fall to the tree assassin that was Irene, the last of which evoking some cringe-inducing imagery in the Brooklyn Paper:

The sexy neighborhood curiosity near Bedford Avenue and the McCarren Park tennis courts has attracted a Foursquare page and even hosts its own Twitter feed, @TheVaginaTree.

But Irene’s furiously swirling winds licked the tree forcefully enough to snap it just above its waist on Sunday. All that remains is a spent stump.

The Foursquare’s account is now “closed.” On Monday night, the tree Tweeted what might be its last message: “I am the stump formerly known as Vagina Tree.”

Then there are those who quietly celebrated Irene’s ruthless instinct:

The fear of god kept an observant Jewish family from chopping down a despised fruit tree, so it took an act of god — Hurricane Irene’s winds of fury — to answer the prayers of neighbors on a small Midwood block.

On Saturday, Irene huffed and puffed and blew down a giant mulberry tree on E. 27th Street between Avenue I and Campus Road that for years had dropped sticky fruit on neighbors’ cars and littered the sidewalk with a tacky, dark-purple paste that made residents walk in the street to avoid stepping in the mess.

“Everybody hated that tree,” said [a 73-year-old neighbor].

Including the people who owned it, who for years refused to take the ax to the behemoth out of fear that god would smite them.

This Makes My Dolphin Tattoo That Much More Badass

I didn’t know there were dolphins in the East River, much less Newtown Creek:

Dolphins may be among the smartest mammals in the animal kingdom, but how exactly did one end up in Newtown Creek?

Location Scout: Newtown Creek.

A Deer On Governors Island . . . Wow

Just wow:

A police boat in New York Harbor spotted the deer running along the rocky shore of Governors Island about 1:30 p.m. and sped to the rescue.

Cops shot the 10-point buck with a tranquilizer and hauled him off to a nature preserve near the southwest shore of Staten Island.

Deer aficionado David Bookstaver — who happens to be the spokesman for the state court system — said it’s not unheard of for a buck to swim that far given the current of the river and the fact it’s mating season.

Location Scout: Governors Island.