Staten Island’s Wild, Beautiful Snow Ponies Have Been Captured

Milk? Check. Bread? Check. Wine? Slanket? Fourteen hours of Ken Burns’ The Roosevelts? Check, check, and triple check. Ponies? … Ponies?

Every New Yorker’s icy nightmare and every urban pony’s winter fantasy were simultaneously realized this morning on Staten Island, when two ponies escaped their living quarters and ran like the exquisite, snow-dusted creatures of God they most certainly are.

#NOW #ESU #Truck5 assists the @NYPD123Pct in wrangling in these runaway ponies in #StatenIsland. Ponies were safely returned to their owners pic.twitter.com/bruBviMdSb

— NYPD Special Ops (@NYPDSpecialops) March 14, 2017

Ponies don’t take the subway, so they cared not about service changes or frozen MetroNorth kiosks (their hooves aren’t useful on touch screens anyway). Ponies don’t go to school either, so their freedom isn’t judged against some science project or pop quiz — it is woven into every fiber of their sleet-kissed manes.

NYPD spokesman Sergeant Lee Jones tells us that a few minutes before 10 a.m. police responded to a 911 call of “two small horses running loose at Richmond Avenue and Hylan Boulevard.”

By the time a patrol car responded, an off-duty officer on his way to work had used a tow strap to hitch the ponies to a lamppost. The ponies were uninjured and were returned to their owner, who lived nearby.

The #statenisland ponies have been caught safely. photo credit: Anthony Dominick #NY1snow @NY1 pic.twitter.com/7b60ENvu1n

— Bree Driscoll (@BreeDriscoll) March 14, 2017

Ponies are legal to keep as pets in New York City, but we asked Sergeant Jones if the owners had received a citation for allowing them to escape.

“It wasn’t intentional, their door came open because of the wind,” he responded.

Ponies in the wind, indeed.

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

the owner of the Staten Island Snow Ponies® … was imprisoned … for using the mob … to extort … Steven Seagalhttps://t.co/s4Vp0FaWYA

— Rachel H. Smith (@rachelholliday) March 15, 2017