DNAinfo made an interactive map of all the complaints to 311 for illegal pets between January 2014 and January 2015, and it’s pretty fascinating. Most of the complaints in the boroughs are about roosters and chickens, and most of the complaints in Manhattan are about the person or persons who stand on the street holding a snake to take pictures with tourists. Is there more than one individual who does this, or is it that same one every time?
The map was inspired by a Brooklyn man who had to give up his pet wolfdog after neighbors snitched. Other interesting complaints between 2014 and 2015 were for “an Alligator,2 Snakes, A Large Rat And An Iguana (Among Other Animals)” in a Bronx apartment (all the reports are written like this, where every word is capitalized and the grammar is generally terrible), kangaroos in Queens, and one person in Brooklyn who turned in his own snake because it was getting too big.
None of these reports, however, have anything on the guy who had a full-grown Bengal tiger named Ming in his apartment in the Hamilton Houses in Harlem back in 2003. That was a crazy story.
(Photo: Dan Nguyen)
