"Never mind the umbrella, grab your chainsaw!"
"Sharknado's" Ian Ziering joked to The Post yesterday that straphangers should be prepared with his weapon of choice after they spotted a shark riding an N train.
The former "90210" star was advising stunned subway riders who found the finned creature early yesterday lurking beneath one of the train's benches.
In the Syfy breakout hit, Ziering's character uses a chainsaw to mow down sharks that are flying out of the sky after they are caught in a tornado.
But yesterday, hard-boiled New Yorkers simply pulled out their smartphones and posted Instagram photos of the dead female smooth dogfish shark.
One user even posed with a MetroCard, Red Bull and cigarette.
"It was the craziest thing I've ever seen on the subway in New York," said Brandon Sanchez, 20, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who boarded the train at Canal Street at about midnight.
He eventually bolted to another car because of the rancid odor.
"It smelled like rotten fish," he said, and speculated it might be a prank connected to the Discovery Channel's "Shark Week."
A conductor coolly reported that there was "a shark aboard the train" at about 12:30 a.m. and emptied the car. A service supervisor then threw it in the trash at the Ditmars Boulevard station in Astoria after reporting that it was dead.
The fish out of water became an instant celebrity, and even earned a Twitter handle, @NYCSubwayShark, which racked up more than 300 followers.
Joe Yaiullo, co-founder of Atlantis Marine World in Riverhead, LI, said dogfish sharks are the most common and are sometimes caught when people go fishing for striped bass.
rebecca.harshbarger@nypost.com
