Trained hawks employed to keep pigeons from making a mess on visitors in a midtown park have been grounded because one of the birds mistook a Chihuahua as its lunch. An 18-inch hawk swooped down and gouged the diminutive pooch with one of its talons while the dog was nosing around in the bushes of Bryant Park, located behind the landmark New York Public Library. [...]

"I sincerely believe the bird mistook it for a rat because it was in the shrubbery," said Thomas Cullen, the falconer hired to run the anti-pigeon program. [...]

"I don't think this should be done away with because of one misstep," Ward Miller, a lawyer from Glen Ridge, N.J., said of the hawks while taking his daily walk in Bryant Park. "This [hawks eating Chihuahuas] is a great idea. It's better than the alternatives, like poison."