She fears this falcon, which she snapped at her window (above), wants the dog. (Asli Bilgin)
WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY: Asli Bilgin cuddles with Miniko yesterday. She fears this falcon, which she snapped at her window (inset), wants the dog. (
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This hungry bird of prey has a taste for Mexican!
An Upper West Side woman claims a falcon is stalking her beloved Chihuahua — eyeing its prey daily through the window of her 22nd-floor apartment.
“I have to keep the window closed all the time now. I just don’t know if it can get through the screen!” Asli Bilgin, 41, who lives on Broadway near West 70th Street, told The Post yesterday.
“It’s better to have the window open, and I always had the window open, but now I’m worried that I’ll come home — and there’s a carcass.”
Bilgin said she first noticed the falcon doing a fly-by the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
At first, she would hold the tiny pooch in her arms while waiting for the bird. But she quickly abandoned that idea when she began to suspect the falcon was less interested in her than little Miniko.
“I realized that was not smart,” said Bilgin, who works in cloud computing for Amazon.
Then, she said, the bird kept returning and started to disrupt her morning routine.
Bilgin said she used to like to poke her head out of the window to see how people were dressing for the weather and check the temperature on the thermometer at the nearby Apple Bank.
But after nearly getting a face full of feathers, she decided it was time to batten down the hatches.
She became more convinced the bird wanted a dog-meat dinner when he kept showing up daily.
Finally, after a week, she wrote to the local West Side Rag, warning her neighbors about the ravenous raptor, which she dubbed Zazu, after a character in “The Lion King.”
“Miniko would come to the window seeing the flush of feathers. Curious, Zazu would come to the other side of window, seeing fur- covered flesh,” she wrote.
“If the small-dog owners of the Upper West Side haven’t figured out, this is a public safety notice. If you live near Broadway and 70th, keep your windows closed,” she wrote.
“Otherwise, you may have an unwelcome dinner guest who may want to snack on something other than your nice assortment of crudités.”
Billgin said Miniko has traveled around the world with her, visiting 17 countries, some very dangerous.
“After all that, she’s in New York — in the Upper West Side — and she’s being stalked by a falcon.”
She joked that the falcon’s intentions have crushed her dream of launching a bird act.
“What a great dinner-party trick! We are laughing, having wine, and then I casually stick my arm out the window and voila: ‘Look guys, a hawk!’ Bilgin wrote to the Rag.