Pjetar Nikaic has been superintendent of 267 West 89th Street, an eight-story apartment building near Riverside Park, for 30 years. What happened there on Friday made it a day he will never forget.
Mr Nikak was returning from a trip to the shop around 5pm when he noticed an object on the ground in the courtyard of the building.
“I thought it was a rock,” he said. “I came closer and I saw: an owl.”
Mr. Nickac immediately knew it was no owl at all, but Flaco, a Eurasian eagle-owl that had just completed a year of living in the relative wilds of Manhattan after leaving the Central Park Zoo three weeks earlier. In a barbaric act, someone had cut the mesh of his enclosure, which has not been solved yet.
Now, Flacco had clearly crashed into the building. Although he was still alive when Mr. Nickac found him and, along with Alan Drogin, a bird-keeper and building resident, ran to get him help, Flacco was soon pronounced dead.
On Saturday evening, the Central Park Zoo reported that preliminary results of the autopsy showed that Flacco died from severe traumatic injury. He had significant bleeding under his sternum and around his liver, as well as a small amount of bleeding behind one eye. Testing to determine whether the owl was exposed to toxins or infectious diseases will take longer to complete.
Thus ends an improbable adventure for a large, fiery-eyed bird that captured the attention of people in New York and beyond by showing that despite having lived almost its entire life in captivity, at least some of the time , can thrive on its own.
Flacco turns 14 next month. And while the dangers presented by the urban environment almost guaranteed a quick death, his life as a free bird inspired a passionate following that was evident in the widespread grief that greeted the news of his passing.
On Saturday in the North Woods section of Central Park, mourners — some carrying flowers, others carrying binoculars, some pushing strollers — walked back and forth between some of Flacco’s favorite oak trees, paying tribute in the cool sunshine. Were looking for the right place for.
Offerings left under trees near the park’s East Drive included a stuffed owl doll, an owl made of wooden blocks, a pencil portrait of Flacco, letters and flowers. A letter bid farewell to Flacco in “eternal flight”. Another thanked her for bringing “joy to the hearts of everyone who watches your magical journey.”
Brian Delgado, 34, was among those present at the park. She placed dried red roses under an oak tree along the park’s East Drive side and said she was writing a children’s book about Flacco, calling him her “muse.”
“I feel like he was showing us how we can break free from our cages, the worldly things, the things that don’t serve us, the things that hold us back,” Ms. Delgado said.
The owl was a source of inspiration for all types of artists. People got tattoos of Flaco and wrote rap songs and poems about him. A documentary film is in the works. Calicho Arevalo, the Colombian-born artist who has painted eight Flaco murals, opened a new one in Freeman Alley on the Lower East Side on Saturday afternoon.
Alfonso Lozano, 36, came to Central Park on Saturday with his wife Sara Bucarelli and the couple’s 3-month-old daughter. Mr. Lozano said he was unhappy at his photography job when Flacco left the zoo last February.
That changed, he said, when he began visiting Flacco daily at one of the owl’s regular habitats, the valley in Central Park.
“He was my therapy,” Mr. Lozano said, adding that his time spent around Flacco had inspired him to quit his job and start his own company.
“Flacco helped me find freedom,” he said.
Originally from Spain, Mr. Lozano made a connection between Flaco’s search for a way to survive in New York and his own experience as an immigrant in the city.
“Flacco means New York,” he said.
Lia Friedman, a 33-year-old public-school teacher who lives in the Inwood section of Manhattan, said that Flacco’s activities introduced her to a new group of friends.
She said she would sit for hours under an elm tree where Flacco often sat, chatting up people who stopped to take pictures of her, take pictures of her or simply tell her: “I love you. Am.”
“It felt really magical, like living in a storybook version of New York,” he said.
Ms. Friedman understood that the risk of Flaco hitting a building, being hit by a vehicle or ingesting lethal amounts of rodenticide was omnipresent. She wanted him to be free and she wanted him to live somewhere safe, maybe a rural area upstate.
“I was very worried about him,” he said.
Ruben Giron, a 73-year-old registered nurse who lives on 112th Street, said she cried when she heard the news Saturday morning.
“She’s the epitome of enjoying being outside and letting the sun beat down on you,” he said. “It’s a heart-opening experience of what it means to be free.”
He added: “We are all figuring out how to live life. That’s what we’re doing and he did it.”
Marian DeMarco, who lives in a West End Avenue building near where Flaco hit, said she first saw the owl in Central Park, surrounded by about 50 spectators. Little did she know that he would eventually make her building one of his regular hangouts.
“It was like a little thing that you could take care of and protect,” Ms. DeMarco, 50, said as she walked her pitbull around the block on Saturday. She said she had met many of her neighbors in the building as a result of Flacco’s presence.
“It’s a bit like the end of – “she paused” – the end of a dream that we were all hoping to hold on to.”
The superintendent, Mr. Nickac, praised Flaco’s presence for its effect on the building’s rodent problem. “No rats since he came here,” he said.
He said he wasn’t sure exactly how Flacco died, but when he reviewed security footage from Friday evening, it showed the bird falling rapidly and pushing the camera.
“He was very handsome,” Mr. Nikaic recalled.
Flacco’s stay in New York was limited to Manhattan, but he had fans everywhere.
Megan Hertzig, 53, who lives in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn, was running with her dog in Prospect Park on Saturday. She said she had been following Flacco’s exploits and had mixed feelings about the act that freed him.
“On the one hand, I’m glad he was free because he was in a very short prison sentence,” she said. “But releasing him in a situation where he can’t survive makes me really sad.”
Scott Weidensaul, author of the Peterson Reference Guide to Owls, expressed similar regret about the situation Flacko was placed in when interviewed last month and echoed the opinion of other bird experts that it was “just before something bad happens.” It’s a matter of time.” ,
On Saturday, Mr. Weidensaul said via email that he was not pleased to hear that Flacco had died.
“Sometimes,” he said, “being right sucks.”
Anusha Baiya, Nate Schweber, olivia bensimon And Gaya Gupta Contributed to the reporting.
