Large crowd of shoppers, gawkers line up for estate sale at “animal house” on Todt Hill

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The line of shoppers and curiosity-seekers started to form before sunrise on Saturday at a home on Todt Hill Road where large statues of animals and fanciful creatures have attracted the attention of drivers for years.

A massive estate sale is being held this weekend at what has been aptly nicknamed the “animal house.” A couple of the iconic lawn ornaments are being sold along with a myriad of household items, decorations, designer clothes and shoes, luxury furniture and appraised art work.

Drivers were gawking as they slowly passed by the home where small groups of people were being allowed in at a time to browse hundreds if not thousands of wares.

The queue started around 4:30 a.m., said Nanette Pettersen, the estate liquidator who predicted that the crowds will continue to gather until closing time at 5 p.m. on Saturday. “The line will never end,” she said.

“It’s been, for lack of a better phrase, a zoo,” joked Charlie De Biase Jr., a senior sports reporter at the Advance/SILive.com who is working at the sale.

The organizers were delighted with the support from the public.

“It’s going extraordinarily well because there’s obviously a lot of good stuff here,” De Biase said. “It’s definitely more than just an average sale. As you can see by the line, there’s a lot of interest in what’s going on and people are here to buy things.”

He noted that there are some deals to be had on quality items sold at less than retail prices.

When asked how the sale was going, Pettersen said, “insane, crazy,” adding that over 50 shoppers perused the goods in the first two hours of the sale and that “every single person has been buying and spending hundreds.”

Before noon she had already sold about $10,000 in…