July 15, 2007 -- Celebrity hawk Pale Male is alive and well and perching on the same Fifth Avenue building where a laughing goon cruelly pelted him with rocks and spit Friday.
"He's fine - he looks very good," said a relieved Lincoln Karim, who caught the bird-brained construction worker on video tormenting the city's most famous feathered resident.
But Karim is furious that the worker, identified as Antonio Torrado, was able to slink away from the scene before police arrived at the posh building at 1040 Fifth Ave.
And he's planning to offer a $1,000 reward for information on Torrado's whereabouts.
Torrado's construction company bosses agreed to detain him, but obviously didn't try too hard, Karim said.
"They said, 'He's only working with us one month; we fired him,' and he slipped away," said Karim. "This is unforgivable."
Neither Torrado nor his former bosses could be reached yesterday.
Karim said he'll give the state Department of Environmental Conservation a few days to track the worker down. Failing that, he intends to put up reward posters and flyers around the area, hoping one of Torrado's fellow workers will come forward.
Pale Male has survived worse, including a nasty flap in 2004 with a building co-op board that destroyed his long-time nest at 927 Fifth Ave.
