Was the Great Brooklyn Goldfish Heist a Rescue? Or a Robbery?
The New York Times
In Bedford-Stuyvesant, an animal lover thought she was doing the right thing by freeing fish from a cement pit. The man who created the pond saw it differently.
The great Brooklyn goldfish heist started, as many dubious plans do, at a bar in the early morning. Inside the Bad Luck Bar in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Thursday, Max David and Emily Campbell met and hatched a simple scheme:
Walk quickly but casually down the street.
Grab as many goldfish as you can.
Walk quickly away.
“Last night was super-smooth,” said Ms. Campbell, 29, who lives in the neighborhood and was racked by what she considered an act, however unintentional, of animal cruelty. In a cement sidewalk pit fed by a leaking fire hydrant, someone had dumped scores of tiny goldfish. Ms. Campbell was certain that they were bound to die. She thought she had to do something, and so, armed with two small fishnets and two large Ziploc bags, she and Mr. David, 32, crept up on the pit.
“We gathered 25-plus fish,” she said.
