Brooklyn Hit With A Wave of Really Tame Crimes, Runaway Sheep
A week after a single cat brought Park Slope to its knees (and New Yorkers went an entire week without committing any murders at all), the apparent wave of vaguely silly crime continues: DNAinfo reports that someone in Boerum Hill stole $100 worth of Halloween decorations from the yard of a 66-year-old woman, someone else stole a bunch of cash from a 16 Handles in Carroll Gardens, and a sheep briefly went on a tear through Sunset Park after escaping from a local slaughterhouse.
None of which is necessarily funny—even in godless 2013 America, stealing from old women is one of the more awful things a person can do, as is shitting all over another person’s holiday spirit—and I guess robberies should be taken seriously, even if the victim in question is a froyo chain. The sheep’s story is actually pretty sad, too.
Reportedly, it managed to escape from Al Noor Halal Meat Market in Sunset Park (where it was “on deck to be sacrificed for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha”), spent a little time running around Third Avenue, and was caught by a pair of local artists, who tried to contact PETA to rescue the animal. Instead, the police showed up, and an employee from the meat market ” hogtied the animal and threw it into the back of a BMW to return it to the shop,” where it is once again on deck to be sacrificed. “This is awful, my kid is going to kill me if I don’t save this thing,” said the man who first found the sheep.
So, unclear if there is necessarily a moral to take from all of this. Crime in Brooklyn is pretty low-key right now? Meat eating and organized religion continue to be things worth opting out of? Even relatively banal news stories come with an undercurrent of crushing sadness? No good deed–be it holiday decorating for your and your neighbors’ enjoyment, or coming to the rescue of a helpless animal—goes unpunished? Well, at least no one’s murdering anybody.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.