by Bram Gunther

In ordinary times, the Urban Park Rangers and the Park Enforcement Patrol (PEP) regularly rescue from our city's parks such wild animals as hawks, black-crowned night herons, and raccoons. The Rangers and PEP work for the City's Parks Department and are the force charged with protecting parkland. Part of their beat is Battery Park City. On the day of the attack, 75 officers were on duty there. Coincidentally, an additional 25 Rangers and PEP were in a training session that was also being held in the park. When the planes hit, 100 trained Parks police were already at the scene.

Initially, they helped cordon off the streets around the World Trade Center. But as the Fire Department, the Police Department, EMS, and the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) hustled in, the Rangers and PEP were inevitably pushed to the periphery.

But they didn't want to just leave. Their city had experienced great harm and none of them wanted to abandon the wound. They made themselves available to the police, to the military guard, and to OEM and set up a command center at Pier 40, at Canal Street. Their role was not central. But on Wednesday September 12th, as residents from Battery Park City and Gateway Plaza drifted back to their homes looking for their pets, the Rangers and PEP happened upon their natural niche: rescuing pets separated from their human companions.

Over the next few days, the Rangers and PEP were joined by the Suffolk and Nassau county SPCAs, the Pennsylvania SPCA, the Lindhurst, New Jersey Fire Company, and the New York City Center for Animal Care and Control. Pier 40 became the center point for what Alexander Brash, Chief of the Urban Park Service, called the "largest pet rescue ever."

To organize the effort, tenants were first gathered on the pier and then separated by their particular buildings. When a group was set, the officers drove them slowly down the promenade along the Hudson River until they reached Battery Park City.

Then, either an officer paired with a resident or a volunteer, or officers by themselves would enter the dark tombs of the skyscrapers in search of a left alone pet.

One such team consisted of Kim Wilkins, a PEP sergeant, and Jessica Cowan, a PEP corporal. Each officer was outfitted with a hard hat that had an attached headlight, a respirator mask, and a heavy white asbestos suit. We looked like "space aliens," Wilkins said.

The officers were told that an elderly woman and her cat were stuck in their 15th floor home. Not knowing the exact apartment, when Wilkins and Cowan reached the 15th story they began to scream and slam on doors. But there was no response. Cowan ran back down the stairs to find the janitor. However, standing there was the tenant herself. Upset, she said, "please get my cat."

Cowan then ran back up the 15 flights. When she and Wilkins finally opened the door of the apartment, the cat ran from them in fear. The officers could only find a laundry bag to carry it in. Wilkins spotted the feline under the coffee table and "dived down."

"Nicey nicey," she said as she grabbed for it. But the cat was so alarmed it scratched her in several places. "We wrestled," Wilkins said. "I mean, I was up in this pitch dark tower, scared deep in my heart that another plane was coming or the building was going to fall down, yet I was more afraid of this kitty cat. It was killing me." Finally, however, she corralled it and brought it outside to her owner.

United with her cat, the woman cried, "Oh Fluffy."

Wilkins thought to herself, "Fluffy, she's more like Satan." Then the woman said to the officers, "Where's my hat?" And Wilkins and Cowan looked at each other wondering perhaps if they had been expected to get her hat and not the cat.

In another instance, Sara Hobel, Director of the Rangers, was approached by a small boy. He said to her, "I was put in charge of taking care of the class newt over the Jewish holiday. You have to get my newt out!" He handed her a plastic container with a note in it. The note said, "Officer, please remember to add water to this container or the newt will die."

Hobel climbed the lonely dark ash strewn staircase of a Battery Park City high rise. She opened the door to the apartment with the key she had been given by the boy's mother. She tried not to peek at things, feeling as if she were somehow a trespasser. She found the terrarium that housed the newt. Inside, the plants were coated with dust, but under a plant, sitting placidly, was the newt. She put water in the container, picked the newt up and put him inside, and walked him back downstairs to the boy.

The Rangers and PEP rescued rabbits, gerbils, fish, turtles, lizards, hamsters, one white rat, parrots, snakes, ferrets, and, of course, chiefly cats and dogs. In the rescue of 1071 pets, only three animals were found dead. One cat, one bird, and one gold fish.

People's existences had been shattered by the attack and they desperately wanted the animals in their lives to be safe and at peace. In the wake of such a tragedy, all lives counted, even a newt's.

October, 2001