Sometime during the night of February 2, 2023, someone cut a hole in the steel mesh of the cage of a Eurasian eagle owl in the Central Park Zoo.
When he escaped that night, the owl, named Flaco, could barely fly, but over the next year he regained the skills that evolution had granted him, flying in graceful swoops and feasting on rats while making Central Park, and later the whole of New York City, his territory. Along the way he gained thousands of followers in the park, who thrilled to his adventures and mourned when he died, on February 23, 2024, a little more than a year after his escape.
