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Pjetar Nikac has been superintendent at 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 wouldn’t forget.
Mr. Nikac was returning from a trip to the store around 5 p.m. when he noticed an object on the ground in the building’s courtyard.
“I thought it was a rock,” he said. “I got closer and saw: Owl.”
Mr. Nikac knew immediately that it was not just any owl, but Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl that just three weeks ago passed the one year mark of living in the relative wilderness of Manhattan after leaving the Central Park Zoo. Someone had opened the mesh of their enclosure in an act of vandalism that remains unsolved.
Now, Flaco had apparently crashed into the building. Although he was still alive when Mr. Nikac found him and, with Alan Drogin, a bird watcher and resident of the building, they rushed to get him help, Flaco was soon pronounced dead..
On Saturday night, the Central Park Zoo reported that initial results of a necropsy showed Flaco had died from an acute traumatic injury. He had significant bleeding under his breastbone and around his liver, as well as a small amount of bleeding behind one eye. Testing to determine if the owl was exposed to toxins or infectious diseases will take longer to complete.
Thus ended an unlikely adventure for a large, fiery-eyed bird that captured public attention in New York and beyond by proving that it could thrive on its own, at least for a time, despite having lived most of its life in captivity.
El Flaco would have turned 14 next month. And while the dangers presented by the urban environment Almost guaranteeing an early 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 with binoculars, some pushing strollers) walked back and forth among some of Skinny’s favorite oak trees, looking for the right place to pay tribute under the cold sun
Offerings left under trees near the park’s East Drive included a furry owl doll, an owl carved from a block of wood, a pencil portrait of Flaco, letters and flowers. A letter bids farewell to Flaco from the “eternal flight.” Another thanked him for bringing “joy to the hearts of all who were able to witness his magical journey.”
Breanne Delgado, 34, was among those at the park. She placed dried red roses at the base of an oak tree along the park’s East Drive and said she is writing a children’s book about Flaco, calling him “muse.”
“I feel like he was showing us how we can free ourselves from our cages, from the mundane, from the things that don’t serve us, from the things that hold us back,” Ms. Delgado said.
The owl was a muse for all types of artists. People got tattoos of Flaco and wrote rap lyrics and poetry about him. A documentary film is being prepared. The artist of Colombian origin. Calicho Arevalowho has painted eight Skinny murals, started a new one Saturday afternoon in Freeman Alley on the Lower East Side.
Alfonso Lozano, 36, arrived in Central Park on Saturday with his wife, Sarah Buccarelli, and their three-month-old daughter. Lozano said he had been miserable at his photography job when Flaco left the zoo last February.
That changed, he said, when he began visiting Flaco daily at one of the owl’s usual resting places, in the ravine in Central Park.
“He was my therapy,” Lozano said, adding that spending time with Flaco had inspired him to quit his job and start his own company.
“El Flaco helped me find freedom,” he said.
Originally from Spain, Lozano made a connection between Flaco finding a way to survive in New York and his own experience as an immigrant in the city.
“Flaco means New York,” he said.
Lia Friedman, 33, a public school teacher who lives in the Inwood section of Manhattan, said that following Flaco’s activities had introduced her to a new circle of friends. She said that she would sit for hours at a time under an elm tree where Flaco often perched, chatting with those who stopped to photograph him, draw pictures of him or simply to say, “I love you.”
“It seemed really magical, like living in a storybook version of New York,” she said.
Mrs. Friedman understood that the threat of Flaco hitting a building, collide with a vehicle or ingesting a lethal amount of rodenticide was ubiquitous. She felt torn between wanting him to remain free and wanting him to be somewhere safer, perhaps in a rural area upstate.
“I cared a lot about him,” she said.
Rubén Girón, 73, a registered nurse who lives on 112th Street, said he had cried Saturday morning when he heard the news.
“It’s a symbol of just enjoying being outdoors and letting the sun hit you,” he said. “It’s an eye-opening experience of what it means to be free.”
He added: “We are all discovering how to live life. “That’s what we’re doing and he did it.”
Marianne Demarco, who lives in a West End Avenue building adjacent to the one Flaco struck, said she had first seen the owl surrounded by about 50 onlookers in Central Park. Little did she know that he would eventually turn her building into one of her regular meeting places.
“It was like having a little thing that you could take care of and protect,” Demarco, 50, said Saturday, tears streaming down her face as she walked her pit bull around the block. He said that he had met many of his neighbors in the building as a result of Flaco’s presence.
“It’s a bit like the end of…” he paused, “the end of a dream we were all hoping to hold on to.”
Mr. Nikac, the superintendent, appreciated Skinny’s presence, especially for its effect on the building’s rodent problem. “Since he came here, there are no rats,” he said.
He said he wasn’t sure exactly how Flaco died, but when he reviewed security footage from Friday night, it briefly showed the bird falling, fast and jostling the camera.
“It was so beautiful,” Nikac recalled.
Flaco’s stay in New York was limited to Manhattan, but his fans were 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 that she had been following Flaco’s exploits and that she had mixed feelings about the act that freed him.
“On the one hand, I’m happy he was free because he was in too small a confinement,” he said. “But releasing him into a situation where he couldn’t necessarily survive makes me very unhappy.”
Interviewed last month, Scott Weidensaul, author of Peterson’s Owl Reference Guide, expressed similar regret over the position Flaco had been put in and echoed the opinion of other bird experts that he was “ “It’s just a matter of time before something bad happens.” “
On Saturday, Weidensaul said by email that he was not pleased to hear that Flaco had died.
“Sometimes,” he said, “it sucks to be right.”
Anusha Bayya, Nate Schweber, Olivia Bensimon and Gaya Gupta contributed reports.
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