Vivi's owners, friends and this intrepid blogger receive daily emails and phone calls from folks who want to know how they can help search for the lost whippet, but who are at a loss over where to start.
Please read the following carefully:
Searchers are now focusing on finding Vivi in an area of the airport that is restricted and off limits to the public. The Port Authority continues to give Vivi's owners access to the area so they can bait and check traps. Under no circumstances should anyone try to access this restricted area, as the agency and searchers have that fully under control.
What is needed now is a sighting of the white-and-brindle whippet, so searchers can confirm their strong hunch that they are looking in the correct place.
Paul Lepiane, Vivi's co-owner, asks that any volunteers head to Hamilton Beach Park, a publically accessible area just west of the A train tracks and the airport, and just south of the intersection of 104th Street and 165th Avenue. You will need strong binoulars or a telescope, as the distance between the park and the shoreline is blocked by another strip of inaccessible land and is five or six city blocks long.
"Sit there with a coffee or hot chocolate, and just look at the beach for a glimpse of her," Paul says.
The ideal times to look would be when Vivi would visit the marshland to hunt, just before and after dawn (5 a.m. to 8 a.m.) and dusk (4 p.m. and 7 p.m.).
The searchers are also trying to survey the shoreline from the water. If you own a boat and are willing to safely and legally navigate the waters near this part of the airport, respecting any marine restrictions that might be in place, contact Bonnie Folz, a Howard Beach resident who is helping to coordinate searchers, at pawsativebf@aol.com.
