FLACO THE OWL

The saga of Flaco, the eagle-owl liberated from his tight enclosure at the Central Park Zoo into a world utterly alien to him, with no survival skills and untested instincts, captivated the city. He lived on his own in Central Park for nine months, before slowly venturing out to explore nearby buildings and neighborhoods.

In February 2024, after a year in the “wild,” Flaco collided with a window of an Upper West Side high-rise and died, his health, and perhaps his perceptual apparatus, compromised by rat poison and a bird virus that he’d ingested with his prey.