The General has eluded his captors again!

As of press-time Sunday, a four-day, five-person, effort by the city's Center for
 Animal Care and Control has failed to result in the capture of a plucky rooster
 that has made Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza his home since February.

No one knows where the rooster -- respectfully nicknamed "The General" because he
 roosts near a statue of Maj. Gen. Gouverneur Warren -- came from, but he has become
 a celebrity among the stressed-out urbanites of Park Slope and Prospect Heights.

But his daily 5 a.m. crowing -- which many enjoy as a nostalgic remnant of a simpler
 time -- has annoyed enough people to require city action. Roosters are, after all,
 illegal in the "built-up" portion of the city.

"I love The General," said CACC supervisor Mike Pastore. "He's like a little piece
 of the country. But if someone is complaining, we have to do something. And we'll
 bring him to a sanctuary where he can run around with other roosters."

But as the saying goes, don't count your roosters before they're caught. Last
 Thursday, Eli Velasquez, a 38-year veteran of various city animal control agencies,
 deployed a specially made trap, only to return the next day to find that someone
 had sabotaged it. Once it was restored, Pastore and his four-person crew --
 coordinating their maneuvers over walkie-talkies and gathering intelligence reports
 from neighbors, doormen, gardeners, smokers and a homeless man -- fanned out in the
 fenced-in area on the east side of Grand Army Plaza. With their big nets, they
 looked like comic-book characters trying to catch an escaped mental patient.

The General was sighted immediately and was quickly cornered in a bush. But he lived
 up to his nickname, retreating like Washington across the East River.

"This is one smart bird," said Kevin Rawlins, the CACC worker who gave the rooster
 his nickname. "Dogs haven't gotten him, rats haven't gotten him, and people haven't
 gotten him. He knows his territory."

With that, The General was sighted again. All five workers quickly had him
 surrounded. But the bad news soon crackled over Pastore's radio: "He got away
 again." This time, it was Pastore sounding the retreat, preferring to allow the
 trap to do its work than waste the entire day chasing a bird.

Many neighbors felt relieved that the pursuit-and-capture mission failed.

"In this neighborhood, you have all these annoying noises -- garbage trucks, car
 horns, people yelling -- so it's nice to hear something natural," said Eddie
 Santiago, the super at 39 Plaza Street West, where pro-General sentiment runs so
 strong that there's a picture of him hanging in the mailroom.

On Saturday, a CACC worker checked on the trap and found it closed with no rooster
 inside. After resetting the trap, he spotted The General and, oddly, a small
 chicken. The General retreated, but the worker captured the chicken easily, the
 mission's first poultry of war.

If the trap doesn't work this week, Pastore said he will put the chicken in a cage
 in hopes of attracting The General -- apparently under the belief that if chickens
 come home to roost, perhaps roosters come home to chicken. (Does the Geneva
 Convention sanction this kind of use of a POW?)

"After that, I don't know what we'll do," Pastore sighed. "The General is a tough
 opponent. And we don't have a plan C."

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gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net