A mama red-tailed hawk mistook an Upper West Side Chihuahua for a chalupa last week, swooping down to snatch the furry snack from a 16th-floor balcony.
The bird sank its talons into the neck of the petrified 7-pound pooch, but little Pico, short for Picasso, survived. He needed four stitches to close the gash after the Tuesday evening attack.
The next morning, the same hawk targeted the same family’s pit bull, Kirra, but the 75-pound pet was unharmed.
The hawk is raising hatchlings on a 15th-floor fire escape on West 72nd Street, just below the penthouse terrace of Pico’s owners, Nicole and Joshua Lehman.
“I heard yelping, and he’s kind of a scaredy-cat,” a shaken Nicole Lehman said of 14-year-old Pico, who was on the terrace for some fresh air. “I didn’t know if I heard the wing flap of the hawk, but I went out and I saw the hawk on its upswoop.
“My heart was pounding,” Nicole, 33, told The Post.
The Chihuahua was cowering under a terrace table and then made a break for the apartment, she said. “He was in our bedroom, and he was shivering.
“I didn’t think he was hurt. I thought the hawk scared him.”
Upon closer look, Nicole saw blood coming from near Pico’s right ear. “I started shivering, too. Luckily, my husband just walked in the door.”
Nicole, a former producer/editor for Animal Planet’s “Too Cute” series, said she and her husband aren’t “looking to ruffle feathers” but want to “warn our neighbors what could happen.”
The Lehmans have lived in the prewar apartment building, a stone’s throw from Riverside Park, for five years. The animal lovers thought it was “cool” that mom and pop red-tailed hawks were nesting below their terrace.
Now the terrace is off-limits, not only to the family’s two dogs, but also the Lehmans’ 7-month-old daughter, Quincy.
“I’m definitely not going to bring her out there. We risked it with Kirra, and they turned on us,” she said.
Tod Winston, a New York City Audobon Society expert, said red-tailed hawks — who have grown in number in the city over the past 20 years — feast on small birds and mammals, “so it’s possible they would mistake a very small dog for prey.”
He theorized the pit-bull incident had to do with the hawk protecting the nest from a perceived predator.
He said Upper West Siders shouldn’t fear red-tailed hawks and noted they and their nest are legally protected.
But neighbors said they would be eagle-eyed from now on.
“Oh my God, I’ve seen that hawk flying around!” said a dog-walker named Eleanor strolling with a Labradoodle and a Havanese.