MISSION: IMPOSSUMBLE
Cops capture critter after E. Village chase
IT WAS marsupial madness Sunday in the East Village as a lost, wild opossum hissed at customers in a First Ave. deli, and found himself on the wrong side of the law after darting into a laundromat.
The critter was booted from Classic Gourmet Deli near St. Marks Place around noon and scurried next door into Cosmos Laundromat.
The NYPD Emergency Service Unit was called in, and was able to nab it.
Opossums are typically nocturnal, but this critter was acting up in broad daylight before it was safely removed in a crate by officials with New York’s Animal Care Centers, police said.
Bill Lam said he was taken by surprise by the critter when it scurried into the laundromat while he was doing his laundry.
“He was sneaking in the window and along the wall, the bottom of the wall, and I say, ‘Holy s---! Big rat? Oh, New York City,’ ” said Lam, 65, of Queens.
“It’s the first time I saw this animal. I said, ‘Where the hell did it come from? Maybe it’s hungry,’ ” he said. “I see raccoon. I see squirrel. I never see this. I see the rat, I see the mouse, but this one?. . . Even in China, I never seen like that.”
After the animal ran under a folding table, Lam said he moved laundry carts to fashion a makeshift barricade, trapping it between the wall and the carts.
Lam, who was alone in the laundromat at the time, told a woman who showed up to do her laundry that there was an animal lurking under one of the tables — and she took off without checking for herself, he said.
The first cops who showed up weren’t able to capture the opossum, but ESU officers were able to nab it using a collar attached to a pole. The confused critter was placed in the crate.
“It’s New York. Anything is possible,” Lam said.
It’s not the first time a city opossum has caused a ruckus by heading out on the town.
One was spotted on a D train in Brooklyn in 2012, forcing an evacuation of the train car — and another opossum snarled service on the same line when it scampered along the electrified third rail a year later.
An opossum was photographed trying to get into the popular restaurant Wilma Jeans in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, in 2015, according to local blog Pardon Me for Asking — the latest in a series of opossum sightings in that neighborhood.
Last year, a mama opossum with eight babies on its back was spotted running through Astoria, Queens, while another of the critters paid a visit to a Lower East Side brunch spot, Clinton St. Baking Company.