R.I.P. Flaco: Like many a hero, the caged zoo owl made his choice… Liberty!
In life, Flaco’s single year of freedom proved vastly more thrilling and resonant to us than his anonymous years of cage-bound safety, proving that freedom is worth the cost, even when it comes bundled with danger. Flaco's choice reaffirmed a universal truth: that given a chance, living beings choose agency and freedom of movement over imprisonment.
CARL SAFINA: Flaco the owl is gone, but his life had all the elements of a classic hero’s story, not soon forgotten. Born in captivity, he lived a dozen years in a comfortable cage in the Central Park Zoo where little happened and less was needed. His was a safe existence. But it was also a life without agency. Then, a little over a year ago, someone released him.
On Friday, when he died of acute traumatic injury, perhaps from a collision with a Manhattan apartment building’s glass windows, his death offered us a chance to reckon with the question at the heart of many a hero’s journey: Can we put a price on freedom? Flaco’s liberation from his comfortable confinement came at a cost — he spent the final year of his life free, but threatened from all sides by a booming city. Was it worth it?
Almost from the moment he was released, Flaco became a symbol of hope for many of the people who followed his story and recognized parts of themselves in him. Some saw him as the embodiment of the American dream, an outsider who had come to Manhattan and made a life for himself here, like millions of others who arrived penniless and unconnected in their quest for freedom. Others saw him as a poignant reminder that you can find happiness even if you’re alone (as the only free-living Eurasian eagle-owl in the Western Hemisphere, he had no chance of ever finding a wild mate)…
But Flaco never looked back. Though the animal literature is peppered with stories of animals — usually pets — who suffer hardships and return home, Flaco never retreated to the zoo. Perhaps freedom itself was the home he’d discovered. And though we feared for him, his new life thrilled us. How many of us, our circumstances familiar and safe, are too timid to seek our more fully realized self? How many of us, viewing our confinements as nothing out of the ordinary, have long stopped wondering what our wings are for?…
Have we not all yearned for a life beyond the scope of the one we lead? Flaco showed that our yearning is not misplaced, that we were not merely projecting. His choice reaffirmed a truth: that given a chance, living things choose agency and freedom of movement… In life, Flaco’s single year of freedom proved vastly more thrilling and resonant to us than his anonymous years of cage-bound safety, proving that freedom is worth the cost, even when it comes bundled with danger. SOURCE…
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