Celebrity owl Flaco dies a year after becoming beloved by New York City for zoo escape

NEW YORK — Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who escaped from New York City’s Central Park Zoo and became one of the city’s most beloved celebrities when he flew through Manhattan, has died, zoo officials announced Friday.

Just over a year after he was freed from his cage at the zoo in a crime that has yet to be solved, Flaco appears to have collided with a building on the Upper West Side, the zoo said in a statement.

“The vandal who damaged Flaco’s exhibit endangered the bird’s safety and is ultimately responsible for its death,” the statement said. “We remain hopeful that the NYPD, which is investigating the vandalism, will ultimately make an arrest.”

Staff from the Wild Bird Fund, a wildlife rehabilitation center, arrived on the scene and pronounced Flaco dead shortly after the collision. He was taken to the Bronx Zoo for a necropsy.

“We were only hoping to see Flaco roaring wildly from the top of our local water tower, and never in the clinic,” the World Bird Fund wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Flaco’s time in the air began on February 2, 2023, when someone broke through a waist-high fence and slipped into the Central Park Zoo. Once inside, they cut a hole in a steel mesh cage, freeing the owl that had arrived at the zoo as a young 13 years earlier.

Since the zoo halted efforts to recapture Flaco in February 2023, there has been no public information about the crime.

Until now, Flaco had defied all odds and thrived in the urban jungle, despite a lifetime of captivity. He became one of the city’s most beloved characters. During the day, he lounged in Manhattan’s courtyards and parks or sat on fire escapes. He spent his nights screaming at the water towers and preying on the city’s plentiful rats.

He was known for showing up unexpectedly at New Yorkers’ windows and being followed around the Big Apple by bird watchers. His death caused an outpouring of grief on social media on Friday evening.

One of Flaco’s most dedicated observers, David Barrett, proposed a temporary memorial at the bird’s favorite oak tree in Central Park.

There, fellow birders could “lay flowers, leave a note, or simply be with others who loved Flaco,” Barrett wrote in a post on X for the account Manhattan Bird Alert, which documented the bird’s whereabouts.

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Associated Press writer Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles contributed.