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Harlem Deer Caught in City-State Tussle Has Died Harlem Deer Caught in City-State Tussle Has Died
(about 4 hours later)
The Harlem deer is dead. A white-tailed deer that went from being a minor celebrity in Harlem to a cause célèbre after its capture, died in captivity on Friday, moments before it was to be driven upstate and released.
The deer, a white-tailed buck that had been condemned to die but was then pardoned after an extraordinary tussle between the mayor and the governor, succumbed at the city animal shelter in East Harlem on Friday afternoon, just after state officials arrived to take him upstate and release him. The preliminary causes of death, according to a New York City parks spokesman, were stress and the day and a half that the deer spent at a city animal shelter in East Harlem. But that did not begin to tell the absurd tale of how the buck, known as J.R., for Jackie Robinson, and Lefty, because of his crumpled left antler, came to die.
“This was an animal that was under a great deal of stress for the past 24 hours and had been tranquilized for much of that time,” Sam Biederman, a spokesman for the city parks department, said. “Unfortunately, it has died.” The deer had become the latest and most unlikely casualty of the feud between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, an animosity that has manifested itself mostly on big issues like education, safety at homeless shelters and funding mass transit.
The deer, known variously as J.R., for Jackie Robinson, and Lefty, because of his crumpled left antler, had spent two weeks drawing adoring crowds at Jackie Robinson Park. How he traveled to a park in the middle of a crowded Manhattan neighborhood remains unclear. But the tussle over the deer was extraordinary even by the standards set by Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio. All day Thursday and into Friday, the city and state issued competing and sometimes self-contradicting updates on the deer and what should be done with him.
After the buck left the park early Thursday morning and jumped a fence into the courtyard of a public-housing project, the police were called, and they tranquilized and captured him. The buck had spent two weeks attracting adoring, snack-proffering crowds at Jackie Robinson Park, where he often was seen near a chain-link fence across the street from a bodega. How he traveled to a park in the middle of a crowded Manhattan neighborhood remains unclear.
Around 4 a.m. Thursday, the buck jumped a fence into the courtyard of the Polo Grounds Towers, a public housing complex north of the park. The police were called, and they tranquilized and captured him, calling him a danger to traffic and public safety.
The city announced plans on Thursday afternoon to kill the deer, citing advice from state wildlife officials.The city announced plans on Thursday afternoon to kill the deer, citing advice from state wildlife officials.
But that evening, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo offered to help the city move the deer, despite the state’s own policy not to issue permits to relocate deer “because acceptable release sites are not available and because the poor chances for deer survival do not warrant the risks.” But that evening, Mr. Cuomo offered to help the city move the deer, despite the state’s policy not to issue permits to relocate deer “because acceptable release sites are not available and because the poor chances for deer survival do not warrant the risks.”
The city initially spurned the governor’s offer, saying that after its time in captivity, the deer would not be able to survive. The city initially spurned the governor’s offer, saying that after the deer’s time in captivity, it would not be able to survive.
“If a deer is already in a natural location and you can leave them there, then they have a chance of survival, but if not, you don’t really have another option,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on the Brian Lehrer radio show Friday morning. “It’s a question of, is it going to be a quick and merciful death versus potentially a very long painful process.” “If a deer is already in a natural location and you can leave them there, then they have a chance of survival, but if not, you don’t really have another option,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on the Brian Lehrer radio show on Friday morning. “It’s a question of: Is it going to be a quick and merciful death versus potentially a very long painful process.”
But just before noon, Mr. Biederman said that officials from the state Department of Environmental Conservation were coming to get the deer and that the city would not stand in the way. But Mr. Cuomo then took to Twitter, posting, “We want to do everything we can to save the Harlem deer.” And just before noon came word that officials from the state Department of Environmental Conservation were coming to get the deer, and that the city would not stand in the way.
After the deer’s death, Mr. Biederman blamed the state. After it looked like the deer might live, allies of the mayor and governor took the opportunity to throw a few jabs.
“Unfortunately because of the time we had to wait for D.E.C. to come and transport the deer, the deer has perished,” he told reporters at the shelter, adding that the city had wanted to euthanize the deer all along. “Bureaucracy lost,” Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for the governor, wrote on Twitter.
The state, for its part, blamed the delay on the city. “Andrew Cuomo is an idiot,” posted Bill Hyers, who managed Mr. de Blasio’s 2013 mayoral campaign.
“We offered yesterday to take possession of the deer and transport it to a suitable habitat,” the state Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement. “The city did not accept our offer until just before noon today, and while we were arriving on scene the deer died in the city’s possession.” For Mr. de Blasio’s supporters, the state’s intervention seemed to be yet another instance of Mr. Cuomo’s penchant for attempting to outmaneuver and undermine Mr. de Blasio on his own turf.
In fact, the long delay in settling the deer’s fate resulted from more than a day of haggling and changing signals between city and state officials. A state biologist told the city at one point Thursday that it had to either release the deer in Harlem or euthanize it, and the city deemed it irresponsible to release the deer in a crowded urban neighborhood. Last year, for example, Mr. Cuomo took credit for bringing universal pre-K to the city, one of the mayor’s signature programs. Mr. Cuomo directed a campaign to support protections for charter schools even as Mr. de Blasio was pledging to cut their space. The mayor has accused the governor of a “vendetta” against him.
It was only after public outcry arose to save the celebrity animal that the governor offered to ignore state policy and save the deer. The life of one white-tailed deer is not normally something the state values highly.
The move showed signs of being another example of Mr. Cuomo’s tendency to insert himself into city affairs and outmaneuver Mr. de Blasio, which he has often done, much to the mayor’s consternation. Deer have overrun the state in recent years, including on Staten Island, where the animals now numbers many hundreds and regularly cause car accidents. The state endorses various plans to reduce the deer population, including “bait and shoot,” and last year, New York State hunters legally killed more than 200,000 deer.
Nor is Mr. Cuomo personally opposed to the killing of wild animals. He is an avid outdoorsman and sometime pheasant hunter. (Then again, Mayor de Blasio has not had an exemplary track record with animals; his encounter with a groundhog in 2014 did not end well.)
But the Harlem deer was no ordinary deer. He was beloved, a holiday-season gift to a beleaguered city, a surrogate reindeer camped out just a block from St. Nicholas Avenue.
As he languished on death row on Thursday, the outcry for him to be saved grew louder. And the barrage of statements from the city and state took on a confounding, tennis-match quality.
The deer could not be moved out of densely populated Harlem — “Bottom line is the options are release back into Harlem or euthanasia,” a state biologist wrote to a city parks official Thursday afternoon — until suddenly he could. He could not be moved across county lines, then he could.
The deer was condemned to die, then he was not, then he was, then he was not.
For a few surreal minutes Thursday night, the deer, like Schrödinger’s cat, was both alive and dead, with a city official insisting he had already been euthanized and the state insisting he had not.
Then, just before 2 p.m. with workers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the federal Department of Agriculture gathering at the Animal Care Centers of NYC shelter on East 110th Street, a city parks spokesman announced that the deer had died.
The spokesman, Sam Biederman, blamed the state.
“Unfortunately because of the time we had to wait for D.E.C. to come and transport the deer, the deer has perished,” he told reporters, adding that the city had wanted to euthanize the deer all along. “This was an animal that was under a great deal of stress for the past 24 hours and had been tranquilized for much of that time.”
The state, naturally, blamed the delay on the city.
“We offered yesterday to take possession of the deer and transport it to a suitable habitat,” the Environmental Conservation Department said in a statement. “The city did not accept our offer until just before noon today, and while we were arriving on scene the deer died in the city’s possession.”
After Mr. Biederman’s brief news conference in front of the shelter, a worker from the shelter came into the lobby, seemingly exhausted.
“It’s been a long day,” she said.