Coyote captured after slinking into NYC parking garage might be part of Central Park couple

Wrong coyote, sir.One of the two coyotes seen canoodling in Central Park may have been the wild dog captured Tuesday morning after it scampered into an Upper East Side parking garage, according to police and experts.The coyote strode into Sterling Parking on East 80th Street off Second Avenue just before 9:20 a.m., cops and a parking attendant confirmed.Video showed officers corralling the animal into a cage and tossing it into the back of a patrol car.Where the coyote ended up is not yet clear — the NYPD said it was released to the marshland of Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, while the state Department of Environmental Conservation claims it transferred the animal to a rehab center in Westchester for evaluation.Neither agency could explain the extreme discrepancy.

There were no injuries in the bewildering incident.It’s not also still a mystery if the coyote was one of the blushing brush dogs who have been frolicking through Central Park in recent months, but Chris Nagy, co-founder of Gotham Coyote Project, estimates it’s a “50/50 chance” — pointing out that the parking garage was just half a mile from the Manhattan green haven.The male-female couple captured the city’s attention over the summer after finding love in the concrete jungle.“They certainly leave the park to forage and fetch, but they know what the rules are and should be back in the vegetation by late dawn.

But anything’s possible,” Nagy speculated.It’s also just as likely that the coyote in custody is a “random wanderer” who walked over a bridge from the Bronx, where plenty of coyotes thrive along the waterfront.There are about 20 coyotes throughout the five boroughs, and the species, considered native to New York, rarely ever pose a threat to humans.Young coyotes typically leave their family groups during the spring to find their own territory.

The captured coyote could have been looking for a place to settle down when the sun came up and found himself stuck in the morni...