It was an ordinary day. Reading a story in my morning newspaper titled "New York City mourns one it looked up to." All began with a story from the superintendent of an eight-story apartment building near Riverside Drive in New York City. Superintendent Pjetar Nikac was returning home from a trip to the store around 5 p.m. when he noticed an object on the ground in the building's courtyard space. He thought it was a rock, but when he got closer he realized it was an owl. He knew immediately that it was not just any owl, but Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who just three weeks ago passed the one-year mark of living in the relative wilds of Manhattan after leaving the Central Park Zoo.
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| Flaco |
Someone had cut open the mesh on his enclosure at the zoo in an act of vandalism that remains unsolved. Now, Flaco had apparently crashed into the building. Although he was still alive when Kikac found him and, with Alan Drogin, a birder and building resident, rushed to get him help, Flaco was soon pronounced dead. He was taken to the Bronx Zoo for a necropsy that will determine why he died. So ended the improbable adventure for a large, fiery-eyed bird who captured the public's attention in New York and beyond by showing he could thrive on his own, at least for a time, despite having lived nearly his entire life in captivity. Flaco would have turned 14 years old next month. Even though the hazards that were presented by the urban environment almost guaranteed an early death, his life as a free bird inspired a passionate following that was obvious in the widespread grief that greeted news of his demise. Saturday saw mourners throughout Central Park's North Woods section...some carrying flowers, others toting binoculars, a few pushing strollers, all walking back and forth among some of Flaco's favorite oak trees, searching for just the right spot to pay tribute in the chilly sunshine. Offerings left beneath trees near the park's East Drive included a furry owl doll, an owl carved from a block of wood, a pencil portraiture of Flaco, letters and flowers. One letter bid Flaco farewell to "eternal flight."Another thanked him for bringing "joy to the hearts of everyone who got to witness your magical journey." This was an owl!! Not many people would get this much attention in New York! People got Flaco tattoos and wrote lyrics and poetry about him. A documentary film is in the works. Columbia-born artist Calico Arevalo, who has painted eight Flaco murals, started a new one at Freeman Alley on the Lower East Side. Alfonso Lozano, age 36, had come to Central Park with his wife and the couple's 3-month-old daughter. Lozano said he had been miserable at his photography job when Flaco left the zoo last February. That changed, he said, when he began to visit Flaco daily at one of the owl's regular roosting spots, in Central Park's ravine."He was my therapy," Lozano said, adding that spending time around Flaco had inspired him to quit his job and start his own company. "Flaco helped me to find freedom," he said. Marianne Demarco, who lives at a West End Ave. location adjacent to the one Flaco struck, said she had first seen the owl surrounded by about 50 onlookers in Central Park. Little did she know that he would eventually make her building one of his regular hangouts.  |
| Remembering a good friend in Flaco! |
"It was like having a little thing that you could take care of and protect," Demarco, 50, said Saturday, tears streaming down her face as she walked her pit bull around the block. She said she had met many of her neighbors in the building as a result of Flaco's presence."It is a little like the end of a dream that we were all hoping to hold on to." Nikac, the superintendent, appreciated Flaco's presence not least for its effect on the building's rodent problem. "Since he came here, no rats," he said. "He was so beautiful," Nikac recalled. Interviewed last month, Scott Weidensaul, the author of "Peterson Reference Guide to Owls," expressed regret about the position Flaco had been put into and echoed the opinion of other bird experts....that it was "just a matter of time before something bad happens." On Saturday, Weidensaul said via email that he took no pleasure in hearing that Flaco had died. "Sometimes," he said, "it sucks to be right." RIP FLACO!! You charmed an entire city with your flights! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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| A graffiti memorial to Flaco at Freeman's Alley in Manhattan |
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