Coyote “Or Similar Creature” Invades Long Island, Queens . . .

That there are coyotes on Long Island now, where they haven’t been seen before (“Coyotes are firmly established throughout all New York counties except Long Island and New York City”), is freaky enough without seeing them within city limits:

Animal control officers set a trap at Rochdale Village after a coyote or similar creature was spotted prowling around a parking lot in the sprawling south Queens cooperative housing complex.

Portends Followup To 2008’s Dark Knight?

Bats, in the Bronx:

They began emerging from the darkest corners of Van Cortlandt Park a few weeks ago: dark, V-shaped, furry blurs, barely visible against the night sky. With a few effortless flaps of their wings, the creatures buzzed over Broadway at speeds faster than any local bird.

“What the heck was that?” David Moreno, 29, asked his girlfriend when he first saw the animals gliding high above the Parade Ground. Tracking their movements, he eventually realized what he was seeing. “Hon, I think those are bats. Could there be bats in the Bronx?”

The answer, city wildlife experts say, is yes. And now is the perfect time to glimpse the rarely seen, much mythologized creatures. Little brown bats — the most common type in the city — have been making daily flights above Broadway and the Van Cortlandt Mansion throughout July, freshly rested after a season of hibernation.

Food For The Worms

It’s not so much the fault of geese or even some turtles that will have their way with us but rather the worms, proving yet again that we need to stop the food chain in order to save ourselves:

Federal wildlife officials studying ways to prevent potentially fatal bird strikes, such as the one that forced a US Airways jet to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River in January, are focusing on mustard, which repels a favorite snack of birds — worms.

After it rains, earthworms crawl onto the runway at La Guardia and JFK airports, providing a smorgasbord for hungry birds, who can then get caught in plane engines, researchers said.

Nature Must Not Win The Game . . . She Must Lose

First birds, now turtles:

Port Authority workers rushed to the shell-covered runway about 8:30 a.m. and scooped up 78 diamondback terrapins that had left the waters of Jamaica Bay scouting a spot to breed, said Port Authority spokesman John Kelly.

Pilots from various airlines shared the news with stuck passengers who had to wait up to 90 minutes for their flights to take off so the turtles could land in a safe place.

Location Scout: JFK.

Canada And Geese: Two Great Targets In One

And now that Canadian Geese have attracted the attention of the Post editorial board, it’s a bad time to be one:

It’s time to kill the geese.

It’s especially time to kill those geese most likely to wreck another jet airliner, much as a gaggle of Canada geese seems to have brought down US Airways Flight 1549 Thursday.

This time, all 155 passengers and crew were lifted from the icy Hudson River — an extraordinarily exceptional outcome.

Next time? Who knows.

Canada geese are a serious threat to human life and property — not to mention a major pain to pedestrians, motorists and folks who just like to spread a picnic blanket in a park.

Obviously, the official cause of the crash won’t be declared for a while. But nobody doubts that it was what pilots call a “bird strike” — just as nobody doubts that the guilty birds were Canada geese.

That’s because Canada geese are everywhere — and they’re out of control.

. . .

Beyond airport vicinities, it’s even harder to tamper with geese (let alone kill them) — even as they coat parks and playgrounds everywhere in layers of disgusting goose poop.

This is unsightly, unsanitary — and totally unacceptable.

Something needs to be done.