[va-richmond-general] more on the NY Raptors!
- From: "Kathy Kreutzer" <k-kreutzer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Va-Richmond-General@Freelists. Org" <va-richmond-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:19:10 -0500
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Kathy Kreutzer
Chesterfield, VA
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/> washingtonpost.com
Joy and Raptor On Fifth Avenue
Manhattan Co-op Reverses Decision to Evict Hawks
By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 17, 2004; Page C01
NEW YORK, Dec. 16 -- At a deli in midtown Manhattan Thursday, a handful
of sandwich makers gave Lincoln Karim a hero's welcome. They smiled,
pumped their fists in the air and chanted "Lincoln! Lincoln!" as he
collected a bagel with cream cheese. Karim, a lunchtime regular here,
looked a little embarrassed.
"I can't believe my life," he said with a sigh, sounding fatigued.
You can understand the exhaustion, if not the huzzahs. In the past week,
this 43-year-old Trinidadian immigrant has been the most militant foot
soldier in a seriocomic and highly public war with the co-op board of a
super-ritzy Central Park apartment building. Generally speaking, the
overlords at an address like 927 Fifth Ave. decide who calls the place
home. But last week, when the board ejected one of its most famous
tenants -- a red-tailed hawk named Pale Male -- Karim pretty much went
nuclear.
Since then, commotion has followed commotion. He did some picketing and
chanting with a group of fellow Pale Male fans. He chased, yelled at and
scared the heck out of the son of CNN host Paula Zahn, who lives with
her family at 927. That led to his arrest and on Tuesday, a night in the
pokey. Then he was bailed out by none other than Mary Tyler Moore,
another 927 resident and a Pale Male partisan, too.
Oh, and on Wednesday he was fired from his job as an engineer with AP
Television.
"I was looking for a change in career anyway," Karim says with a shrug.
"TV is a despicable medium."
He hardly seems like the stalker type, which is the way that New York
tabloids have been depicting him in recent days. "Judge to Birdbrain:
Stay away from Zahn brood," read a headline in Thursday's New York Post.
Karim is soft-spoken and contemplative, and at lunch Thursday he brought
along a notebook to jot down his musings. He won't discuss his legal
troubles, though the news media reported Thursday that prosecutors read
aloud in court a police confession by Karim, one that came with an
apology.
"I'm sorry," he was quoted as writing. "I knew I should not have gone
after the kids." On Wednesday he was released on bail and the judge
ordered him to stay at least 1,000 feet away from the building.
Karim says he'll comply, but it won't be easy. Pale Male and the nest at
927 Fifth Ave. have been his passion for five years. Actually, passion
seems too drowsy a word. Ever since Karim laid eyes on the bird, he's
spent nearly all his free time and every single vacation day chronicling
the comings and goings of Pale Male. (The name refers to the hawk's
surprisingly white feathers.) Karim operates a Web site, Palemale.com,
which is packed with photos he's taken and greets visitors with the
words "If you love something dearly, you shouldn't mind suffering a
little in its honor."
He's shot about 800 hours of videotape, and he keeps graduating to more
sophisticated equipment to keep tabs on Pale Male's life. On most
mornings, before all the current unpleasantness, you'd find Karim with a
telescope attached to a 32-inch monitor so as many as 100 onlookers
could watch Pale Male at the same time, either as he hung out in the
nest or hunted in nearby Central Park.
"I don't want to use the word obsession," Karim says, "but if I get some
vacation time, why would I go strap two pieces of wood to my feet and go
skiing? I'd rather watch Pale Male."
Karim is an avid animal lover, of course, and for a long time he's been
reprimanding dog owners who let their pooches chase squirrels, and he's
hectored the passengers in the horse-drawn carriages around Central
Park. ("The drivers would tell me to get a life.") But Pale Male was
more than just another animal. To Karim -- and this is going to sound
more than a little weird -- the hawk felt like a creature he'd been
searching for his whole life.
"I always wanted a friend like Yoda, you know, someone who was pure
knowledge. But every human being I've met, there's always been some
disappointment. When I met Pale Male I felt like there was wisdom oozing
out of him."
Karim might take all this a lot further than anyone else, but he's
hardly Pale Male's only admirer. In 1993, when the bird first took up
residence on a 12th floor cornice at 927 Fifth Ave., he was the only
known hawk in the city. New Yorkers could identify with a bird who'd
chosen the city over the suburbs, even though there was a lot more room
and fresh air elsewhere. Pale Male has had 22 kids since then, a
dynasty, and many of his offspring are seen hovering over Central Park.
Everyone seemed thoroughly enamored. Except for some owners at 927, a
building in the neo-Italian Renaissance style where apartments can
easily fetch $10 million. A few of them complained that the carcasses of
rats and pigeons -- part of a hawk's balanced diet -- were occasionally
tossed from the perch more than 100 feet above, which was a safety
hazard. It didn't help that the street below was often cluttered with
gawkers, some of them training high-powered binoculars on the nest. The
whole thing was getting on their nerves.
So on Oct. 19, the board decided it had had enough of the nest. Last
week, a crew showed up and dismantled it, twig by twig. Also removed
were pigeon-shooing spikes, which had the unintended effect of helping
Pale Male, and his assorted mates, keep their eight-foot nest in place.
Richard Cohen, the husband of Paula Zahn, heads the board and when news
of the eviction became public, he and his wife were suddenly the
personification of hawk-hating evil. Protesters with signs that said
"Honk 4 Hawk" were soon circling and the local chapter of the Audubon
Society got involved.
Karim took it further than anyone, you won't be surprised to learn. At
one point, he allegedly confronted Zahn's 7-year-old son, who was out
walking with his nanny, telling him, "Your parents are going to pay for
this."
Enough mud was slung for some to land even on Mary Tyler Moore. Citing a
"board source," the New York Post ran a story Thursday claiming that
Moore's pro-hawk stance was revenge for the board's recent decision to
turn down a buyer for her $18.5 million home. She needs the money,
hissed this unnamed someone, because she hasn't worked in a long time.
"That couldn't be more ridiculous," says Mara Buxbaum, Moore's
spokeswoman. "She's been outspoken for a very long time on animal
issues. These two events have nothing to do with each other."
By Monday, the co-op board had begun to retreat. The spikes would be
replaced, and pending approval from the city's preservation pooh-bahs a
box big enough for a hawk nest would be installed right where Pale Male
once lived.
The reason for the turnabout? Zahn, through a spokesman, declined to
comment on any of this. But the sheer volume of anger apparently had
something to do with it.
"It certainly surprised me," says Aaron Schmulewitz, the co-op's lawyer.
"I got over 200 e-mails, from all over the world, some of them death
threats."
Pale Male and his current mate, Lola, have been spotted in parts of
Central Park and Karim, for one, has no doubt the love birds will return
to the lair as soon as 927 Fifth Ave. is again ready for them. In the
span of a couple of weeks, if all goes as planned, it'll be as though
none of this ever happened. Except that Karim won't be around, at least
for as long as there's a restraining order against him. His lawyer even
advised him to steer clear of Central Park, just to be on the safe side.
"I think I'll write a book about Pale Male, collect my photographs," he
says, shaking his head. "Maybe I need a break."
C 2004 The Washington Post Company
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