The King of the Concrete Jungle : Animals: Police in Yonkers, N.Y., found a lion living in a transmission shop. The creature was turned over to the ASPCA, which warned against keeping wild animals in the city.

A lion was found living in the back of an automobile repair shop Friday, and the businesssman told authorities an unknown man had dropped the animal off four days earlier and had not returned.

Police Lt. Vincent Fontana said the animal, which appears to be about 1 year old, was discovered by Sgt. Brian Hill in the back room of Yonkers Transmission.

“Beginning last week we started getting many calls from people reporting they had heard a lion roaring,” Fontana said. “We get many calls from people saying they’ve heard a lion roaring, and these things usually turn out to be nothing to all.”

Not this time.

“Hill approached the auto shop’s owner, Pat Tartaglione, 29, and was told, ‘Yeah, it’s true--I do have a lion.’ ”

Tartaglione said an unknown man had left the lion at the shop on Monday and had promised to retrieve it soon.

“During the four days the animal was at the shop the owner fed the creature raw meat,” Fontana said.

Fontana said the lion had no collar but was kept in a secured area. “If people went into the shop to get their transmission repaired, they probably wouldn’t have gotten bitten.”

Police said Tartaglione will be questioned further.

Yonkers police turned the matter over to the ASPCA, which ordered the animal brought to the society’s “animalport” at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Kathi Travers, director of the animalport, seemed less than pleased. “I just got rid of one lion, and now I’ve got another,” she said.

On Monday Travers accompanied Herman, a declawed male lion that a Brooklyn family had tried to raise as a pet, to the Endangered Species Survival Center in Lumberton, Miss.

“There seems to be an outbreak of lions in New York,” the woman said. “Lions don’t belong here. They belong in the jungle . . . and I don’t mean the concrete kind.”