A farewell to Flaco the free bird, the ultimate New Yorker

For New Yorkers, the death of Flaco — the beloved Central Eurasian eagle-owl that escaped from the Central Park Zoo a year ago after someone cut the mesh wires to his small cage — is a painful ending to a glorious year of free flight.

The city loved Flaco because he represented so much of New York’s spirit and ideals, which we may not always live up to, but we recognize on sight.

It wasn’t because we were all naive about the challenges that came with his freedom. After Flaco took up residence in the North Woods of Central Park, I saw him nearly every day. Adoring crowds regularly gathered around his favorite tree, and we constantly worried about all the threats to him from an urban environment: cars, buildings, eating poisoned rats. We knew.

But Flaco was far more resilient, stubborn and scrappy than most anyone had given him credit for. Day after day, he hooted, fluffed and spread his magnificent wings and flew above our heads, resisting all the naysayers. New York, the city that lives and thrives with all its complexity and mess, the destination of millions in defiance of all the predictions of its demise, immediately recognized one of its own and embraced him.

Zoo officials kept trying to capture him with traps full of frozen, dead rats and with audio recordings of other eagle-owls.

But instead of being lured back by a recorded siren song from a boombox, Flaco took flight and learned to hunt on his own. As he embraced his liberty, the city — whose symbol is not named the Statue of Captivity and is not engraved with a call for the huddled masses yearning to eat frozen food alone in a small cage — celebrated along.

Flaco kept attracting crowds not just because he was such a glorious bird, with his marvelous ear tufts and splendid 6-foot wingspan, but also because we were touched by his yearning to fly free. We didn’t want to see him on exhibit; we wanted him to soar and thrive.

Goodbye, Flaco. You will be missed. We will remember you as a bird that flew free in a city that survives and flourishes despite all the challenges and attempts to stifle its spirit.