Guinea Fowl Savior Protected Bird Before Police Showed Up

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — A Brooklyn woman spent hours chasing a guinea fowl around a hectic Brooklyn gas station as she waited for police to come to the bird's rescue, she said.

The woman, who declined to give her name, reported the loose guinea fowl at the BP gas station on Empire Boulevard and Rogers at about 7 a.m. Tuesday morning, two hours before they arrived, she said.

"I didn't feel like at rush hour it was going to be safe for a bird," she said. "I called the precinct for them to send a car and they were like, 'Call 311.'"

The woman spent the next two hours calling local animal services organizations and trying to stop the enormous bird from being hit by a car or drinking possibly toxic water pooled in the lot, she said.

"He almost got hit a few times ... he kept pecking things to find food," she said. "He just needed someone to take care of him."

A Lyft driver pitched in to help by bringing the bird a bottle of water and several of the woman's work colleagues helped her reach out to the Prospect Park Zoo, which confirmed it was not one of their escaped peacocks, she said.

A friend convinced the woman to call 911 at about 9 a.m. and four 71st Precinct police officers, whom the woman said were "very helpful and very courteous," arrived to help her corral the bird into a cage.

Police captured the guinea fowl about an hour later and took him to the nearby precinct, where the Animal Care Centers of New York City came to pick him, the NYPD and ACC representative Katy Hansen told Patch.

He has since been named Gilberto.

The woman was relieved when she could finally get back to work, and grateful her reason for being late — she was trying to save a massive guinea fowl loosed in a Crown Heights parking lot — was so well received by her colleagues.

"It was a bizarre experience," the woman told Patch. "I'm glad it had a happy ending."

"Hopefully it lives a full life," she added. "Whatever that is for a guinea fowl."

This isn't the first time a wild and winged beast has caused a flap in Brooklyn. A goose once ran loose on the tracks of the Q train and a baby falcon was recently rescued outside a Bed-Stuy cafe.