An Owl’s Escape Resonates Worldwide
Once upon a time, there was an owl named Flaco who lived in a zoo in the middle of a big park in New York City. His story was a cliffhanger about escape, freedom and resilience.
As media from around the world recounted Flaco’s adventures, concern about the owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo spread beyond his hometown. Many people followed his story with both anxiety and hope — worried that after a lifetime in captivity, the owl would not know how to fend for himself.
Flaco made “his public debut” at the zoo in 2010. When a vandal cut the wire mesh on his enclosure last month, the only world Flaco knew was forcibly ruptured — a trauma that could have proven fatal. From his micro-apartment, Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl was suddenly free in Central Park and exposed to all the perils and thrills of the city.
Owls throughout history have exerted a magnetic hold over our imaginations. Perhaps no other creature has been invested with such contradictory meanings across so many different cultures — as a protective spirit, a totem of erudition and an omen of death.
The owl was known as a companion to Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare — possibly because of the bird’s phenomenal vision and skill as a hunter. In his 20th century adaptation of the King Arthur legend, T.H. White gave the future king’s tutor, the magician Merlyn, a companion named Archimedes — a talking owl who teaches the young Arthur how to fly.
In part, it is owls’ sense of mystery, their nocturnal nature and elusiveness that account for their power to captivate. Another factor is their expressive eyes and almost human countenance. Bella Hatkoff, an artist who has volunteered at the Wild Bird Fund, said that owls are almost perfect illustrations of what the zoologist Konrad Lorenz called “baby schema” — a theory that the features of a human infant (round head, big eyes, roundish body) trigger protective emotions.
Many New Yorkers, especially those confined to small apartments during Covid, identified with Flaco. David Barrett, who runs the Twitter account Manhattan Bird Alert — which many people have used to track Flaco’s journey — noted that people who arrive in New York “need to learn new skills quickly if they want to survive, and they must adapt to an environment unlike the one from which they came. In Flaco’s success they see their own — or inspiration to continue working toward their own.”
All these were reasons that people felt so protective of Flaco. The biggest worry during his first days of freedom was that he would not know how to hunt and could starve to death.
But Flaco defied everyone’s expectations. He mastered the art of flight and became an increasingly confident hunter. Within a week, he was proudly showing off the rats he had killed with his talons.
When Flaco was living at the zoo, he had been described by one longtime visitor as grumpy and slightly pudgy — much like people stuck at home during the pandemic. But after only two weeks in Central Park, he had become an athletic and handsome prince, enthusiastically hooting his presence to claim his place in the city — or find a possible mate.