NYC's Flaco vs Harvard Law School's Langdell Bird
On Our Obsessions with Birds in Their Unnatural Habitats
You are studying at Harvard’s majestic law library Langdell Hall — picture yourself on its top floor, blessed with natural sunlight, surrounded by heavy volumes of books. You focus on the paragraph on collateral estoppel, a highlighter ready to aid you as you prepare for the next day’s predictably brutal cold calls. You try not to distract yourself with that muted cellphone that you had hidden in your bag.
But—
Chirp!
And there it is. The Langdell Bird.
The first semester of my 2L year, I became obsessed. With a bird.
Rumors had started that our library — the formidable, neoclassical building that has a reputation of being dead silent because of how focused its readers are — unwittingly welcomed a noisy guest. A little bird had flown into our beloved Langdell Hall. The little bird brought with it mystery and intrigue, refreshing the rather stiff atmosphere at this revered library. It was unclear whether the bird voluntarily got in, why it got in (could it be the thirst for legal knowledge?), if it enjoyed being there, where it pooed, etc.
I was among the lucky ones (being a diehard library lover) who got to meet the bird before the rumors even started spreading. I was intensely focusing on my reading materials when I suddenly caught a chirping sound, instantly distracting me. I soon found the bird, flying at a seemingly impossibly fast speed, from one end of the floor to the other above the many bookshelves.
I was charmed. I was smitten. I frequented the library even more during varying times of the day, adoring the bird’s delightful presence alongside the weighty tomes.
Fast-forward 3.5 years. I graduated from Harvard Law School and haven’t seen the bird since “an intrepid student” caught the bird and set it free (our head librarian had sent HLS-wide updates about the status of the bird, especially the previously failed attempts at capturing it to release it). I finished my federal judicial clerkship on the West Coast, and moved back to the East Coast to start my BigLaw job in the City. I miss Oregon’s beautiful nature and the free sprit the Langdell Bird symbolized, and now frequent Central Park with my boyfriend on weekends.
This is when another celebrity bird entered my life: Flaco the Eurasian eagle owl. Followed by his female neighbor, Geraldine the great-horned owl.
My obsession with Flaco emerged from a conversation with a law school friend. We were chatting about our favorite things to do in NYC. I had mentioned my love of the outdoors and a few books I recently read on animals, and she had mentioned how much she loves walking her dog in Central Park. I recall then bringing up a few zoos I’ve visited in NYC and elsewhere, and some thoughts about animal rights.
“Did you hear about the owl that escaped from the Central Park Zoo?”
“No, I haven’t!” I responded, eager to hear more. I had just read that coyotes were sighted in urban areas in NYC. “Though I’ve seen the owl at the Zoo! Even very recently — like 10 days ago? It escaped?”
My friend briefed me on the basics, and I avidly researched afterwards. The Central Park zookeepers found Flaco the owl gone from his cage one night after his exhibit was vandalized. Sure enough, they frantically searched for Flaco, quickly found him curiously wandering around Fifth Avenue (near Bergdorf Goodman, of all places…), tried to lure him with rodents and recorded hooting sounds from other Eurasian eagle owls, but failed to bring him back to the zoo.
People started worrying if this owl, who got to the Central Park Zoo a mere few months after his birth (in North Carolina) and had spent more than 12 years there, would know how to hunt and survive. After all, Flaco had been fed allegedly-Whole Foods-quality rats for the past 12 years while in captivity. But soon enough, people saw evidence that Flaco had started hunting and succeeded at catching and eating the Park’s abundant supply of rodents. The Zoo finally declared that it had essentially given up attempts of recapturing Flaco, and that Flaco would continue to be a free owl.
The public rejoiced and became obsessed. Flaco soon became a symbol of freedom. Or shall I say, a symbol of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (funny how an Eurasian became a symbol for the very spirit of America — the third-culture owl)? There’s the Statute of Liberty not too far from Flaco, and then, there is . . . Flaco, the escaped zoo owl who now enjoys admiring sunrises and sunsets that he had not really seen in his zoo cage, flying wherever he pleases, observing other wildlife he had not encountered while in solitary confinement in his cage, and hunting.
So far, my boyfriend and I have visited Flaco 3 times on separate weekend afternoons. We remain quite obsessed, got binoculars, and even spotted the other Central Park owl, Geraldine (who many hope will become Flaco’s soulmate). The possibility of seeing Flaco again comes with some positive incentives: while our Central Park strolls used to be limited to a relatively small area, we have now committed to walking from the southwestern-most part of the park to the northern-most, where Flaco tends to reside. It’s become a healthy weekend routine at this point.
Each time we visited Flaco (and more recently, Geraldine), the crowd only grew. Over the course of about a month, the public’s voracious appetite for more Flaco developments has only expanded. Every day, Flaco’s fervent but mostly respectful paparazzi patiently wait for him to wake up around sunset, hoot, move his head 360 degrees, show his remarkable wingspan, clean his nails, and fly out. With professional telephoto lenses, tripods, binoculars, and perseverance (alas, the cold NY winter is no deterring factor), the crowd tracks and documents Flaco’s life out of captivity. Various Twitter pages (my favorites are Manhattan Bird Alert, #Flaco, and Flaco The Owl — and I don’t use Twitter outside of Flaco-tracking) provide up-to-date information on Flaco’s whereabouts and new feats. Some fans travel from out of state, taking two-hour train rides, hoping to get a peek of Flaco. Others wake up unbelievably early or literally in the middle of the night and rush to Central Park, aiming to be the first to find Flaco that morning. Many of us are now transformed into bird-watchers.
National media also joined in. From CNN to ABC to CBS to NPR, from The New Yorker to The Atlantic to National Geographic, many major publications have shared the enchantment with Flaco and spread this excitement. One article even calls Flaco “the owl that became a New Yorker.” Another calls him a “free-ranging parenting metaphor.” And another designates Central Park’s new apex predator as New York’s newest tourist attraction. The range of subjects explored are diverse, but the general sentiments are near-uniform: we celebrate Flaco and admire him as a symbol of liberty, adaptability, and resilience.
In short, Flaco is out of long-term captivity, but we remain captivated.
While the Eurasian owl is back in nature (sort of — Central Park is in one of the most urban areas of the world), he is not in his natural habitat. As his name implies, his roots are markedly not North American.
In that sense, Flaco is in a similar position as my beloved Langdell Bird — they are both celebrity birds cherished by watchers, accidentally having ventured into their unnatural new habitats. Like the Langdell Bird, Flaco’s appearance in the North Woods of Central Park brought with him a series of unanswered questions: is Flaco happier now (data shows zoo animals’ lifespan is much longer in captivity than in the wild — is the freedom worth the shortened lifespan)? Will he be able to survive (the rats he consumes might contain rat poison)? How long will the public’s obsession with him last? Is freeing Flaco one solution to Mayor Eric Adam’s vocal concerns about NYC’s rat problem?
Flaco was not always a celebrity. Far from one. Relatively few had paid attention to him when he was a zoo exhibit. The nearby penguins easily outshined him. After all, during zoo open hours, the nocturnal animal hardly moved or did anything that ordinary zoo-goers would find mesmerizing. While I do recall Flaco’s large orange eyes condescendingly looking down at me as he sat on the top tree branch in the cage when we had visited him at the Zoo, I cannot even find a photo of him from his Zoo days.
So why is he famous now?
A large part of the obsession is, somewhat ironically, the very uncertainty of possibly locating Flaco on any given day among the many, many trees at Central Park. Who knows, he could also choose to venture out-of-state. The ephemeral beauty and the pleasant surprise of finding Flaco is a great reward and relief for many. When Flaco had briefly disappeared for 3 days last week, many had become worried. People anxiously exchanged intel on Flaco, while Flaco’s mischievous Twitter account announced that he simply enjoys hiding once in a while. It became a game of hide-and-seek. In retrospect, my love for the Langdell Bird also rooted in large part in the excitement, uncertainty, and fear that it would fly out of our company as unexpectedly as it had arrived at our library.
There’s also the appeal of observing a stranger in a new land. Or rather, a long-time neighbor in the same park he had lived for more than a decade. Similar to the Langdell Bird, who had probably been roaming around the Harvard campus long before stepping foot into the library, Flaco had almost always lived in Central Park. For a major cosmopolitan city like New York, where two-way mobility in and out of the city is one of its defining features, Flaco has been in NYC longer than many humans. Yet, his only scenery for more than 12 years has been the fake mountain backdrop that decorates his cage in a minimalist fashion. Newcomers to NYC might experience some loneliness and excitement in the new setting, not unlike what Flaco might be going through. Despite how dramatically different we as a species differ from owls, we might share something fundamental.
Another factor is the whole experience itself. New Yorkers have the notorious reputation of being rude, especially to strangers. Quite simply, you don’t just chat with strangers randomly. Busy New Yorkers seem to compete with each other who walks the fastest and who looks the busiest — at least in Midtown, where I work. Tourists who take the time to leisurely explore and take photos are frowned upon, particularly when they block the busy white collar workers’ speed-walks to the office. Yet, the individuals observing Flaco every day not only slow down to share the latest intel and best photographs of the owl with each other, but also share much warmth and passion together. As a community. Bird-watching is not exactly the most common hobby among New Yorkers. Among Flaco’s daily admirers are not only long-time bird-watchers and experts, but also amateurs like myself.
I had once listened to an elderly Oregonian lady rambling on and on about the joys of bird-watching as we prepared to go on a group hike. She had shown me, with much pride, her mobile App that helps analyze the individual bird species based on its song. I was impressed, but could hardly go into a more in-depth conversation with her due to my embarrassingly limited knowledge of the various bird songs. For Flaco (and Geraldine)’s watchers, prior knowledge is not a prerequisite. Passion and curiosity reign instead. And the openness to learning something new. Every time I arrived at the rough area Flaco had been sighted earlier in the day, I could rely on strangers to share more information to guide me towards the owl, and reciprocate by guiding newcomers to Flaco. The communal experience and human connection are welcome, especially after a long period of isolation over the course of the pandemic. Those are the people who share your determination of squinting into your binoculars at a not-really-moving bird for hours in the cold. Those are the people who also have a neck pain from trying to find Flaco everywhere in the park. Those are the people who bring joy to your busy workday with funny owl-inspired tweets, and the people who point you to minute details of Mother Nature you might not have otherwise truly appreciated — spending so much time in the woods with Flaco offers more time and opportunity for us to admire the burgeoning flowers and the full moon. Those are the people who truly understand the thrill of finding that free-moving target you have met before and hope to see again — my serendipitous encounter with an owl in the Oregon woods somewhat pales in comparison.
Today is Flaco’s 13th birthday, and the first he has had outside the Zoo. Even though Flaco picked the Ides of March as his hatching day, he seems to be enjoying life overall now.
Happy Birthday, Flaco!
