So Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl is dead — killed in a collision with an Upper West Side building Friday, a year after vandals cut the wires on his cage, just inside the Central Park Zoo.
Well-meaning, naïve New Yorkers had spun the owl’s story as a feel-good tale: Flaco had seemed happy in the “wild,” so, vandals aside, all’s well that ends well.
In fact, it always was a tale of vicious vandals — who still haven’t been caught — maliciously abusing a defenseless animal, abuse that has resulted in that animal’s cruel killing.
In early February 2023, criminal vandals broke into Flaco’s cage, allowing the bird, a creature of the zoo for 12 years, to fly away.
At first, the zoo frantically tried to recapture Flaco.
With the bird’s survival in peril, the press and the public played the story straight.
The owl “was the subject of an intense rescue effort late Friday after getting loose as a result of vandals,” The New York Times wrote, and serious birdwatchers worried about his ability to hunt.
But Flaco soon did learn to hunt — and became a feel-good meme.
“It’s easy to see ourselves in a chubby little homebody who ditched his one-room apartment for the great outdoors,” the Times incorrectly observed. “His story was a cliffhanger about escape and freedom and resilience.”
Flaco didn’t escape, though, but likely fled in fear of strangers who threatened him.
Nor was he ever “free” but stuck in a city full of “luxury” glass skyscrapers inhospitable to birds and eating food (pigeons and rodents) potentially laced with rat poison.
(Flaco died of trauma; it’s not clear whether poison-induced disorientation may have contributed to his death.)
All over the city, for a year, amateur “birdwatchers” posted their iPhone shots of Flaco.
Yes, we all need a diversion, and making light of what had appeared to turn into a fun situation is hardly the worst sin in the world.
Still, though, the New Yorkers taking pictures of Flaco didn’t sympathize with the bird.
They empathized with him, in the most superficial of anthropomorphic ways.
Flaco was just like them!
He wanted a bigger apartment!
He wanted to explore the city!
He “celebrated” his one-year anniversary of freedom!
Flaco became a tourist attraction.
Nothing to do? Go out to Central Park and join the rest of the social-media mob and try to find the wild bird.
And the pictures people took of Flaco, with their always-at-hand ready-to-prey “mobile devices,” weren’t true reflections of an animal at peace in the world.
They were just funny: Here’s Flaco looking in my window! Here’s Flaco with a squirrel!
(Yes, Flaco got his own unauthorized Twitter account, of course.)
Because Flaco had what looked to humans like an unruffled, serene expression — which was just our own perception, not the bird’s emotion — people quickly stopped caring whether Flaco was actually surviving well.
And now we know the inevitable answer: No.
The real story of Flaco is that an unprevented small crime led to a big one.
Whatever the motive of the criminal or criminals who broke into Flaco’s cage, the action led to the bird’s suffering and acute traumatic death.
And the narcissistic behavior of the New Yorkers who saw in Flaco their own lives reflects an all-too-common approach to other city issues.
The city is safe; there are no shootings in my neighborhood!
The subway is safe; I wasn’t one of the many women viciously assaulted in the past few years!
The Central Park Zoo, to its credit, has never made a joke of Flaco’s likely distressing, disorienting year in an unfeeling city more interested in Instagram than in animal welfare — a year that culminated in Flaco’s violent, fatal crash.
Over the weekend, the zoo reiterated, “The vandal who damaged Flaco’s exhibit jeopardized the safety of the bird and is ultimately responsible for his death. We are still hopeful that the NYPD . . . will ultimately make an arrest.”
Good, and let’s hope District Attorney Alvin Bragg ensures that he, she or they do real jail time.
If the animal-cruelty law doesn’t carry a harsh-enough penalty, felony burglary and felony larceny — when actually prosecuted — certainly do.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
