Daphne Ciccarelle knows just how to fowl-up any subway mugger’s day.
And the unflappable Gothamite isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty while doing it.
In fact, she used her bare mitts to grab a feathery, albeit filthy, friend for a trip on the uptown C express train Wednesday — and let her little anti-theft repellant ride in style.
“I picked up a 100%, real live pigeon, put it in a Chanel shopping bag and took it with me up to 86th Street,” Ciccarelle, 24, a marketing manager living in Chelsea, told The Post.
“I didn’t want to get robbed,” she continued with a laugh. “And if I did get robbed I just planned to yell, ‘It’s a pigeon! It’s a pigeon! Please believe me!’ ”
Ciccarelle shared the viral visuals of her wild commute to an online audience of over 4.8 million cooing TikTok viewers, who deemed her designer dupe “iconic.”
“Imagine if someone steals the bag thinking they scored Chanel, but it’s a literal pigeon,” penned an impressed spectator
“Isn’t this the new pigeon bag? Like, the Chanel bag that looks like a pigeon,” joked another.
“Yass NYC pigeon girl. Pop off,” wrote an equally awestruck onlooker.
Cheers from hooting fans of the high-end hack notwithstanding, Ciccarelle tells The Post that the stunt actually had little to do with protecting herself.
Instead, she just wanted to be a good egg.
“I was taking a midday walk near Battery Park, saw this little pigeon wobbling down the street and picked it up,” explained the Gen Zer.
“He was sad and sick — I couldn’t just leave him there,” she continued, noting that the bird appeared to have a broken leg. “I wanted to take him to the Wild Bird Trust on the Upper East Side.”
A lifelong animal lover, Ciccarelle — whose New Jersey family’s rescued thousands of critters in need over the years, including dogs, cats, chickens and rats — didn’t think twice about handling the hapless flapper.
“Most people think touching a pigeon is really gross,” she said, “but I wasn’t too worried about it.”
Oft-maligned as “sky rats,” pigeons are known for carrying an alarming number of disease-spreading pathogens, including E. coli and salmonella. However, their germs are rarely transmittable to humans.
Still, the pests’ mere presence has long-ruffled the feathers of no-nonsense New Yorkers.
In September 2022, Upper East Siders were in an uproar after a cab driver dumped pounds of bird seed into the streets, attracting flocks of pigeons, and poop, to the otherwise posh zip code. The ferocious upset came just months after a Kips Bay man launched a petition to stop folks from feeding the “dirty birds” that March.
But Ciccarelle said hating on NYC wildlife is totally for the birds.
“Picking up a pigeon is nothing — I had two pet rats as a kid,” boasted the fearless free spirit. “If a rat needed my help, I’d pick it up, too.”
While cradling the pigeon, Ciccarelle was approached by a TriBeCa woman who offered to give her a box for toting the creature around town. But, alas, when the ritzy stranger returned to the park from her high-rise building, a Chanel bag was the only container she had on hand.
“I was like, ‘A Chanel bag?,” chuckled Ciccarelle. “‘OK, let’s do it.’”
And that they did.
After placing the pigeon in the swanky sack, the unlikely pair headed to the subway.
“I was sitting on the train with the bag perfectly perched on my lap,” recalled the blond, admitting that she probably looked to others like she was showing off, “because I had Chanel.”
“But the whole time, I was holding the bag tight and still so that the pigeon wouldn’t go rolling out and onto the subway floor,” said Ciccarelle.
During their trek to the bird sanctuary, Ciccarelle would sporadically crack open the stylish satchel to comfort her winged ward, saying, “Hi, little baby. Are you warm in there?.”
And like a Christmas miracle, no ne’er-do-wells tried nabbing the precious cargo.
After arriving at the Wild Bird Trust in Columbus Circle, Ciccarelle turned over her ailing darling, who she didn’t name, to specialists.
“They contacted me this morning and said the pigeon isn’t doing that well,” she lamented. “If he doesn’t make it, I’m glad that I was able to find him and take him somewhere warm where he can rest comfortably.”
“Pigeons get this bad reputation in New York City,” said Ciccarelle. “But they’re actually really great birds.”