Anne Whitehouse
Flaco
Eurasian Eagle-Owl, March 15, 2010-February 23, 2024
In his twelve years of life,
Flaco never left his cage in Central Park
until the February night
when vandals stole into the zoo
and cut the steel mesh imprisoning him.
He flew as far as Bergdorf Goodman,
half a mile away.
In those first hours of freedom,
Flaco hunched over a midtown sidewalk
in the rain, dazed and confused.
His talons gripped the sidewalk,
his large, round orange eyes
dazzled by revolving police lights,
his sensitive ears deafened by sirens.
He ignored the pet carrier baited
with frozen rat, placed next to him.
A long-buried instinct stirred.
Unfolding his long wings,
Flaco took off again,
returning to the park.
The initial rescue efforts
were hampered by crowds
who interfered with zoo staff.
That night Flaco caught his first rat,
flushed by a garbage pickup,
and took it to the treetops.
Eating, he paused to hoot softly.
In the zoo, he’d hardly ever hooted,
and he hadn’t yet found his voice.
His first efforts at flying were clumsy.
He crash landed onto branches
and made a racket. But he persevered
to become a graceful flyer,
gliding silently and swooping soundlessly.
Wherever he went, people tracked
and broadcast his movements,
shot pictures and videos.
He’d become a celebrity
in a city that venerates celebrities.
Succumbing to public pressure,
the zoo abandoned rescue efforts.
A myth developed about Flaco:
that he had chosen freedom,
that he wanted to make his home here,
that he was like the rest of us,
cooped up in the pandemic
and now let out, discovering his city.
By nature a feral bird far removed
from his native habitat
who had never lived on his own,
Flaco wasn’t living a wonderful life,
but eking an existence in an urban park
between a compost heap
and a construction site,
with no chance of encountering
another of his kind,
the only Eurasian Eagle-Owl
in all of North America.
His continuing survival
astounded everyone.
As he gained confidence,
his ethereal beauty grew,
his expressive tufted ears,
his delicate feathers striped
orange, white, and brown
puffed out around his body,
his slightly devilish face.
Seeing him behave like other owls,
claiming a wildness
he’d never experienced,
was awe-inspiring.
One summer evening,
he chased a rat into the fence
next to a ballfield, trapping it.
He ate part of it and saved the rest for later.
Another night, he waddled
from tree trunk to tree trunk
on his thickly-feathered legs,
searching for his cache.
After he ate it, he bathed
in a puddle on the playing field.
Serene with the sunlight
on his face in the summer morning,
his gular fluttering to beat the heat,
preening and radiant,
or camouflaged among
dying leaves in the autumn,
Flaco attracted attention.
In November he disappeared
from his roost in the park
and was seen five miles away,
in Tompkins Square.
In the winter, he returned uptown,
but he didn’t remain in Central Park.
Flaco perched above water towers
atop the roofs of apartment buildings,
like an eagle-owl alight on a cliff.
Resting on scaffolding
twenty stories above the avenue,
Flaco leaned forward and hiked up his tail,
and his wings drooped down,
his ear tufts ruffling in the wind,
his white throat patch enlarged
and shining in the moonlight,
as a lovely, soft “hoo” emerged.
A gentle sound that travelled
surprisingly far, it could be heard
by pedestrians two blocks away.
Sometimes Flaco hooted for hours.
Avian experts worried he was distressed.
Manhattan had become his prison,
full of invisible dangers,
where no large owl has ever survived
more than eighteen months.
Early one February evening,
just past a year since Flaco’s release,
the super of 267 West 89 Street
came across what he thought
was a rock lying in the alley
just outside his basement door.
On closer examination
he recognized Flaco,
lying face-down, wings splayed.
The cause of death was traumatic injury,
a hemorrhage under the sternum
and around the liver. A necropsy
confirmed high levels of rat poison
and an infection from a pigeon virus.
We made too much of Flaco,
without considering what he really was:
an animal estranged from his habitat,
living on borrowed time.
