Flaco II: At the New York Historical

I never saw Flaco in person. He had already been on the run for six months by the time I landed in New York. I simply could not make the time to go out and find him, to try and catch a glimpse of him. Those early days were a fog of desperation and instant survival. I didn’t even make it to his memorial.

The New York Historical (they have chosen to drop the “Society” from their official name) is hosting an exhibition, “The Year of Flaco”, on “New York’s most famous bird” from February until July as part of their initiative to “collect contemporary history.” The launch was timed to coincide with the first anniversary of his death. 

I emerged from a side room showcasing some of the Historical’s art collection to confront an inset glass cabinet at the end of the hall. Here, against the west wall, I encountered a selection of items from Flaco’s memorial.

People left paintings, drawings, handmade signs, and stuffed animals. My attention was caught in a carved wooden effigy, in the notes and letters left bearing his name, in the candles with their burnt wicks. “Our guardian,” one note calls him. Someone left a Cuban peso. An activist donated a pamphlet detailing the dangers of rodenticide. “Please take or share this information,” says the red sticky note attached. Even before Flaco’s body could be examined, people could guess what killed him. 

“You were always invisible at first,” says one letter in clear and organized cursive, “even when I was looking straight at you.”

Letters testify to the hope people found in him. Two on feature: one from a cancer survivor, another from someone depressed who found a reason to get out of bed and go see him fly free.

The photographs on the opposite wall show Flaco as he lived.

The night of his escape, Flaco stood on the sidewalk at the corner of 5th Avenue and 60th Street. In the snapshot he appears calm, curious, still, and round. He looks from person to person. A cop walks behind him. Between the caution tape and the owl is a pet carrier. The plan is for Flaco to hobble in willingly and be transported back home. If someone nearby was capable, a spokesperson would later say, they would’ve thrown a blanket on him.

Central Park caretakers kept close tabs on Flaco. Expectations were not high. Attempts were made to recapture him–among the photographs is the moment a humane leg trap catches one of Flaco’s talons. He jumps in surprise and flaps for safety. A moment later he would escape. 

Flaco defied all the odds. He lived longer than any other captive-born escapee. He learned to survive fast, tapping into hunting skills we all thought he’d lost. His first confirmed kill was a pigeon. 

He took on a diet of pigeons, rats, and squirrels. Officials determined that he didn’t need a full recapture effort; he could take care of himself. Flaco gained strength and flew around Central Park, staking out his territory. Flaco, funny enough, is a Spanish-language nickname for “skinny.” Evidently Flaco had been a bit of a runt when he was little. I was, too. It gave me one more reason to root for him as I knew, somewhere, he was roosting in the daytime and chasing prey in the dark. Flaco was a daily celebrity, adored by a throng of well-wishers and photographers and birdwatchers. He captured human attention with bright and curious orange eyes, and feathers “of a beauty no human could create,” as one letter left at his memorial would later put it. 

Hundreds of images of Flaco are scattered across the internet. He traveled between apartment buildings, issuing his unanswered calls, as his human following grew. Select contents from two separate books of photography are framed and on display.

Another famous shot from Flaco’s first few weeks on his own shows Flaco and a squirrel mere feet apart on a tree branch. “After a life in captivity,” the caption explains, “Flaco encountered many animals and situations for the first time.” The squirrel pauses, all limbs extended, spread out as flat as possible, in the throes of fight-or-flight. Flaco, in all his magnificence, simply looks back in surprise. On his restful branch, this easy prey item a lunge away, he doesn’t move for it. The squirrel, counting its luck, would skitter away before long. Flaco would not give chase. 

I looked from the picture to the caption and back again. My body froze with horror. This photo was taken on February 23rd, 2023. Exactly one year later Flaco would be dead. 

I stepped back then, and stood alone between the wall of photographs and the glass cabinet, asking questions I couldn’t answer. To what degree is all of this pomp and circumstance appropriate? What can John Audubon’s sketches of owls with slightly wonky faces in the next room bring to Flaco’s memory? What good will the thematic selections from Flaco’s memorial site bring when they’re taken down into “deep storage,” the museum-studies parlance for the cold and cataloged bunkers where 90 percent of a museum’s assets are held when they’re not on display? 

This whole exhibit started to feel like a betrayal. Nothing could bring him back. And then I heard his voice.

In the quiet of the upstairs hall of the New York Historical, a small video screen plays excerpts from his year of freedom.

April 15th, 2023. Flaco hoots from his favorite tree. Alarm calls from other birds ring out, and then fall into a tense silence. Below him, from behind a camera lens, the humans are speculating again.

“Does he sleep at all?” asks a woman’s voice. “He always seems awake.”

A boy asks how Flaco even got here.

Later, Flaco spends some time roosting in a different pine tree. He is staking out his territory, like any other owl.

“He gets too close to the people,” says one onlooker, “and then he can’t get out when he wants to.”

Another video shows Flaco on a favorite branch, round and calm, before a blue jay starts to mob him: a harassment tactic, to try and drive a threat away. But Flaco doesn’t budge. He merely cranes his neck up and behind to watch the dive-bombing bird, the curiosity and annoyance spelled across his face.

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Owls are not the most social of creatures. You will not find owls forming intricate, lifelong packs nor hanging in flocks on street corners. Flaco seemed content to be alone, but before long – as I had migrated north to the Bronx that winter – he started to call out in a new way.

Flaco the Owl was looking for a mate.

For my part, I wanted to help him from the ground. Flaco remained a page-three spotlight all that winter: in the papers one could see him fly to a high-rise co-op balcony down in the Lower East Side; poised on the railing of a water tower; see him stare in from someone’s air conditioner; pause before flight to stretch his wings. He would stop and call and search for a female of his species that he would never find. 

I’d toyed with his bachelor status and pledged to build him a dating profile, as authentically New Yorker as it could get. 

Likes: clean Timbs, that one bodega on the corner. Dislikes: that other bodega, the opps, drivers who honk their horns. 

Of course, he’d need a song as well. Since owls have strong ears, rehabbed and human-raised owls can be seen across the internet “wiggling their butts” (rocking, rhythmically, in place) in tune with a song. So I picked one good song for him – aussie punks Amyl & the Sniffers, and their raucous lovesick 2020 single “Security”:

Not looking for trouble,

I’m looking for love.

I had dragged my feet on it, on this joke facsimile of what Flaco deserved, this chuckle at his grace and bravery. I was about to scrap the whole idea when three people texted me to say that Flaco was dead.

My reasoning for writing about him, twice now, is simple: these elegant birds of prey, with their wide searching eyes, expressive faces (eyebrow feathers!) and fascinating habits, have captivated me since I was a child. Flaco was one of many owls in the world but, undoubtedly, he was one of a kind. No other escaped zoo animal would live as long as he did.

I like to think this exhibition can be encountered from any direction. I like to think that a visitor doesn’t need to amass years’ worth of owl-knowledge in order to appreciate the evidence of his life: one that stood in an unerring spotlight, and glowed. Flaco’s legacy is not limited to this exhibition. He will live on as long as his name is spoken. I only hope the visitor stops for a moment, right when the videos start to play again, and listens. 

I like to think people did their best for him. I like to think people learned more about how owls operate as Flaco continued to tour Manhattan. I like to think anyone who saw him, even through their phone screen, was struck with some sort of curiosity about the natural world. He was studied and admired and seen and loved by everyone lucky enough to encounter him. Pieces of his memorial, and the visual testimony to his life, are here at the New York Historical. Next door, at the American Museum of Natural History, his body was donated to science. His wingspan measured six feet in length.

I stared at the memorial, where the letters waited behind glass. They demanded to be read once more. Among the most powerful was a small note, streaked by rain, in the silver marker of a young girl. 

“My sister says you were just an owl, but that’s not true,” the author insists. “You were more than that.”