The Good Old Days
From a Talk of the Town about the history of New York’s poop scoop law:
Then you had your community activists—Max Schnapp, of POPA (Pet Owners Protective Association), a labor organizer and the owner of two Great Danes (Tiger and Sampson), a pet crow (Mitzvah), three rabbits (Pinkie, Dutchie, unnamed), a white mouse (Piggy), a baby squirrel (Elmer Wiggley), a gerbil, and half a dozen alley cats (Mau Mau, Nebisch, Sister, Freddy the Freeloader, Monty Wooley), vs. Fran Lee, the founder of Children Before Dogs—grinding out their small-bore issues on the grand stage.
Max Schnapp seems like the consummate Old New Yorker, given his (1) dedication to a completely deranged cause, (2) command of the Yiddish language, and (3) willingness to tell it like it is (I mean, presumably Elmer Wiggley was really fucking wiggly, you know?)
I can’t seem to find it anyway, but one of the best Talk of the Towns ever was about Berhard Goetz, the “subway vigilante” of the ’80s, and what Wikipedia terms his involvement in “the squirrel community of New York.” Goetz befriended the squirrels by feeding them tomato sauce. No word on whether or not they were wiggly.
