Flaco the Eurasian Eagle Owl has become a New York celebrity since he escaped his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo early in 2023.
He’s been spotted flying through the concrete canyons of midtown, perched on fire escapes on the upper east side and ridding New York of its vermin — but he’s not your friendly neighborhood Spiderman.
He’s Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl and New Yorkers have been rooting for him ever since he escaped from a small enclosure in Central Park Zoo and decided the entire park and its environs would be his domain.
Since then, Flaco has evaded capture, put aside concerns that he’d be able to survive in the big city and shocked the hell out of New Yorkers who have seen the curious little guy’s face pressed against the glass of their apartment windows, watching them intently.
“I audibly gasped,” 24-year-old Matt Sweeney told the Wall Street Journal after he realized something or someone was watching him through the window of his upper west side apartment.
“It absolutely scared the you-know-what out of me,” 31-year-old actress Reilly Richardson told the paper after she woke up one morning to find the peeping predator watching her from outside. “It’s New York City. It’s the last thing you expect to see.”
Flaco escaped Central Park Zoo in February after his enclosure, where he lived for 12 years, had been “vandalized,” according to zoo staff. It turns out someone sliced an opening in the mesh, giving Flaco an out which he quickly took advantage of.
For the next few months zookeepers chased him around Central Park, trying to lure him back with food and the recorded sounds of other owls, but Flaco wasn’t having it. In the meantime he became a celebrity, New York’s version of the famous mountain lion P-22, with crowds of birders and curious onlookers assembling to watch and photograph him.
Credit: New Yorker Robin Herbst-Paparne, who spotted Flaco outside her apartment. Via WSJ
Social media accounts tracking the raptor’s movements sprung up online, and all the attention became too much. Even though zookeepers gave up on returning him to his enclosure, Flaco apparently decided he was done being watched and became the watcher.
Since then he’s popped up all over Manhattan, delighting New Yorkers and giving others a scare as they noticed the two-foot owl tracking them from a fire escape or a window perch. In early November he left the comfy confines of Central Park — possibly spurred by the crowds and commotion of the annual NYC Marathon — and began exploring the city proper, popping up in random places each day.
Initially people were worried Flaco, who had spent his entire life in captivity, wouldn’t be able to feed himself. The owl quickly put those concerns to rest as he proved adept at feasting on New York’s abundant rodents, earning himself the nickname “New York’s Rat Czar” at a time when Mayor Eric Adams has declared war on the vermin.
Experts are divided on why Flaco is spending so much time watching people. As the only known Eurasian eagle owl living “wild” in North America, the little guy may be looking for a mate. They say he won’t find one of his species, but he could find an unpaired female of another species if he’s lucky.
Others say Flaco, who was raised by humans and isn’t afraid of our species, may believe a human could be his mate. That’s another way his predicament mirrors that of P-22, who settled in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park and became a local celebrity, but was cut off from potential mates by busy highways and miles of human-inhabited land.
Nan Knighton, whose apartment faces Central Park, snapped this shot of Flaco outside her apartment.
Regardless, people in New York are enchanted by the unusual resident and delighted to see him. Nan Knighton, who took the above photo (via WSJ) told the paper she had an intense encounter with Flaco. After realizing a pair of intense eyes were tracking her inside her home, she made friends with the curious owl:
He stuck around for three hours.
“I talked to him,” says Knighton, recalling telling Flaco he’s beautiful and gorgeous, and that she couldn’t believe she was speaking to an owl. When she walked into another room, Flaco’s head swiveled to follow her.
Flaco stayed quiet until Knighton got within 6 inches of his face. “He just let out this little tiny hiss,” she says. “It was kind of like, ‘OK, I like you, but I don’t want to be beak to beak.’”
She turned her back to the owl to write something down. When she looked back, Flaco was gone.
Flaco proved too smart for zookeepers who tried to entice him with traps like the one above. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Bella and Luna retain their spots as the most popular names for female cats, while male cats are commonly named Leo, Milo, Simba and Oliver.
The top cat and dog names for 2023 have been released, and Rover lists the usual suspects for the New York area.
The top female names for felines include Luna, Pepper, Lily, Coco and Bella, while the boys were Leo, Oliver, Milo, Jack and Henry.
There is no Buddy to be found even amongst the dogs, whose list included Charlie, Max, Teddy and Oliver, while females included Lucy and Rosie in addition to the ever-popular Bella and Luna.
I have a niece named Lucy and a nephew named Milo, neither of whom are old enough yet to understand their names are more popular with four-legged little ones than humans.
Nationally, Luna and Bella occupy the two top spots for female cats, followed by classics like Nala, Kitty and Cleo, while the most popular male cats in the US are Oliver and Leo, with names like Simba, Ollie and Jasper rounding out the top 10.
Again, not a Buddy to be found among the most popular male cat names.
This is obviously because the name Buddy is so special it is only conferred upon the most meowgnificent, meowscular and meowsterful felines. (Is he still looking over my shoulder?)
Who’s ready to rock? After a nice nap, of course!
Interestingly, nostalgic names from the 80s and 90s are trending, with people naming their female dogs and cats Alanis (Morisette), Ginger Spice, Avril (Levigne), Richard Gere and Leonardo DogCaprio among other monikers.
I don’t know if I could see myself naming a cat after a 90s band, musician or actor. I think, in these situations, it’s always best to imagine what happens if your furry friend gets lost and you have to walk around the neighborhood calling them by name.
“Come ‘ere, Weezer!”
“Where are you, little RZA? Who makes dope beats? You make dope beats, yes you do!”
“Time for din-din, Ol’ Dirty Bastard!”
“Where’s my widdle Rage Against the Machine? Aren’t you just a precious Red Hot Chili Pepper!”
If you feel like a jerk calling a name out, it’s probably best to go with something else. Which is one reason why Bud isn’t Brutus the Bone Cruncher or Supreme Warlord Felinius Decimus Maximus.
Rover compiles its annual lists of most popular names from its user database, which includes millions of pets registered by their proud humans…and not enough Buddies.
For All Mankind shows us the future we could have had and the future that could still be if we celebrate our humanity instead of our differences.
The first few minutes of For All Mankind play out like a documentary for the Apollo moon landing, interspersing archival footage of tense staff in mission control with shots of engineers in horn-rimmed glasses poring over data, backup astronauts raising their glasses in a pub and nervous families sitting in their 1960s living rooms, crowding around televisions.
A news anchor cuts in to report he’s getting the live feed from the moon. We see the door of a lander open…and a Soviet cosmonaut strides out, planting the flag of the USSR on the lunar surface and becoming the first human to ever set foot on another world.
That’s the premise of For All Mankind. In this alternate history series, the fire that killed astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee on Apollo I’s launchpad — which indeed happened in real life — led to policy changes and a more cautious culture at America’s space agency, resulting in the US losing the first and most momentous achievement of the space race.
That’s the start of the what-ifs.
What if the Soviets beat us to the moon? What if the rest of the space race was even more competitive than it was in our history, with an America struggling to prove its primacy? What if the US and Soviet Russia continued to pour incredible resources into space exploration? How far would we go? What kind of incredible new technologies would we invent? How would all of it impact American politics, culture, identity and standing in the world?
Could it have led to a better future?
Werner Von Braun (Colm Feore) and Deke Slayton (Chris Bauer) in NASA mission control in For All Mankind. Von Braun and Slayton were real-life leaders at the space agency and formative figures in the space race.
The answer to that question is hinted at in the series’ title, and while the show is filled with tense moments of international, organizational and personal rivalry, it’s infused with rational optimism instead of the cheesy, manufactured aspiration we’re accustomed to. It’s more like asking: What could the human race achieve if we all worked together? Is that retrofuturistic gleaming vision of the future still possible, and how do we get there?
For All Mankind follows Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and Gordo Stevens (Michael Dorman), astronauts and best friends whose Apollo mission came within a few thousand feet of landing on the moon just weeks before the Russian landing.
They’re miserable as they sit in a dive bar just off NASA’s campus watching grainy footage of cosmonauts claim their glory, and blame themselves for their failure to land even though it wasn’t in NASA’s cautious mission plan.
Astronauts watch the Soviet moon landing from The Outpost, a dive bar frequented by NASA employees.
The scenes that follow look like they could have come from the 1995 blockbuster Apollo 13 as we meet the astronauts, their kids and their nervous wives, the eggheads and flight directors at NASA, and the political players who keep the space agency funded and protected from the wrath of President Richard Nixon.
With the agency rocked by the Soviet achievement and intense political pressure, it embarks on a series of bold new endeavors dictated by the White House. Not only will Americans land on the moon, they will build a permanent base there, and — embarrassed and spurred on by the fact that one of the cosmonauts was female — NASA will for the first time train a new, all-female class of astronaut recruits.
The later group includes hotshot pilot Molly Cobb, “token black girl” Danielle Poole, quiet but determined Ellen Waverly — and Tracy Stevens, astronaut Gordo Stevens’ beautiful wife who is an accomplished pilot in her own right. While the women manage the normal pressure that comes with astronaut training and the high stakes nature of the job, they must also contend with pushback coming from directions they don’t expect — including hostility from some of the wives of current astronauts, who feel their husbands’ jobs will be threatened by women in space.
A proud Gordo gives his wife her astronaut pin.Ellen Waverly, Molly Cobb, Tracy Stevens, Danielle Poole and another recruit are part of NASA’s first class of potential female astronauts.
For All Mankind is a science fiction show, but it’s also a drama and a thriller, putting viewers through the wringer of emotions.
There are funny and amusing moments as the show references celebrities, political figures and musicians from the 1960s onward, grounding the narrative in American culture. The fortunes of some celebrities and politicians change in the show’s alternate history while others stay the same.
In one running storyline — which you’ll only catch if you pay close attention to certain scenes and montages — John Lennon survives the attempt on his life, continues on as the grating, post-Beatles John Lennon most people would like to forget, and becomes just another aging musician cashing in on past glory alongside bandmate Paul McCartney and bands like the Rolling Stones.
The extension of the space race and continuation of US-Soviet rivalry impacts society in profound ways, many of them we may not realize from our historical perspective.
For example, DARPA created the internet because the US government and military wanted a decentralized communications network that could withstand nuclear attacks and remain operational even if major nodes are taken out in nuclear blasts.
That’s why the internet works on such a wide variety of hardware and why, even when major servers go down, our routers are able to move data packets via alternate paths. It’s difficult to imagine a time when the web wasn’t a medium for exchanging photos and videos of cute cats, but the early internet was populated by government officials, Pentagon brass and leading scientists in crucial fields.
In real life, restrictions were taken off the internet when the Soviet threat began to fade, allowing widespread civilian adoption of the technology and early dial-up services like AOL and CompuServe.
That doesn’t happen in For All Mankind’s alternate history as the USSR and communism remains a major threat, resulting in pop culture developing along a different cultural arc than the one we’re accustomed to.
While the pop culture references, sets, cars and costumes help ground For All Mankind historically, the show is at its best when it puts us in mission control and the command modules of high-risk space missions, constantly reminding us of the danger these men and women face while highlighting the commonality of astronauts, cosmonauts and later space explorers from other countries, all of them just human beings millions of miles from their families and everything they’ve ever known.
At the same time, the US and the USSR are playing a game of nuclear brinkmanship and astronauts are in many ways on the front lines as they figure out how to co-exist in unprecedented circumstances and places famously inhospitable to human life.
If astronauts tap a lunar mine too close to Soviet base camp, could that start a war? Are the Soviets spying on communications between NASA and its astronauts on the moon? What happens if someone gets hurt and their blood can’t clot in low/zero gravity?
NASA astronaut Danielle Poole shakes the hand of her Soviet counterpart as their modules dock in space.
Kinnaman, Dorman, Sarah Jones (Tracy Stevens), Sonya Walger (Cobb) et al shine in those scenes as they juggle the pressure of surviving in space with being exemplars of — and diplomats for — their country. Rather than be content painting the Soviets as the traditional bad guys, the show also gives us a close-up look at the people in the USSR’s space program and the pressures they face, particularly Polish actor Piotr Aleksander Adamczyk’s Sergei Nikulov in his relationship with his NASA counterpart, flight director Margo Madison.
In one of the show’s quieter moments, Poole (Krys Marshall) takes two cosmonauts to The Outpost when, during joint training exercises, they request real American cheeseburgers and whiskey. After a few drinks one of the cosmonauts grows somber and tells Poole how he held Laika, the Moscow street dog who was famously blasted into low Earth orbit in her own little module, before scientists were sure enough in the technology to risk human lives.
Although Soviet propaganda feted Laika as a hero and the official story said she survived until re-entry, the cosmonaut tells Poole that Laika died shortly after liftoff, terrified, alone and subjected to unimaginable forces as thousands of pounds of fuel carried her capsule heavenward via brute force.
(The west was no less barbaric: The French famously sent a street cat named Felicette into space while NASA used a young chimp named Ham. In all of those cases the animals were named only after their missions, as mission commanders didn’t want to risk humanizing them in the event of disaster. Had Felicette and Ham both died in space they’d be remembered only by their identification numbers as footnotes in early space history.)
Kinnaman grounds the show as Ed Baldwin, one of the second generation of astronauts who take the mantle from men like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
For All Mankind recently began its fourth season and because AppleTV’s marketing and promotion is curiously weak, it remains one of TV’s best-kept secrets. If you haven’t seen the show yet, now’s a great time to jump aboard with so many TV shows on hiatus for the holidays and many others pushed back or canceled in the wake of the parallel strikes that halted production for most of 2023.
For All Mankind
Network: Apple TV
Content rating: TV-MA for bad language, occasional drug and alcohol use and mature themes.
Ratings: 8.1 (IMDB), 93% (Rotten Tomatoes), 4/5 (Common Sense Media)
The promise of a revolutionary new method of claw trimming is all hype, sadly.
I was hyped when I saw the headline.
“Cat Owners Rejoice,” the Newsweek headline blares. “Science Can Make Trimming Claws Less Stressful.”
Well if cat owners are rejoicing, it’s gotta be amazing, yeah?
I imagined cat affionados feting the creator of some miraculous new device that keeps cats comfortably restrained and relaxed, or maybe celebrating the discovery of some previously-unknown sound frequency that lulls felines into such a state of carefree bliss that they purr contentedly while we carefully clip their claws.
What I didn’t expect was a “protocol” that amounts to: Touch your cat’s leg. If he doesn’t try to murder you, touch your cat’s paw. If he still doesn’t murder you, trim a single claw. Repeat steps the next time your cat is in an agreeable mood.
That’s it. That’s the revolutionary new method that “science” made for us, according to Newsweek. “Science” must be proud of itself!
With this wonderful new method I should be able to trim one of Bud’s paws by 2067.
Obviously this is not science. It’s a method, not research. It’s well-intentioned and designed to keep cats comfortable, and those are noble goals, but calling it “science” is misleading, just like every other dumb headline that asserts “science says” or something is true “according to science,” as if science is an omniscient entity lounging on pillows, being fed candied figs by worshipful attendants and occasionally dispensing little nuggets of wisdom for our tiny little brains to absorb.
“The designated hitter rule shall henceforth be abolished,” Science says betwixt pulls from a hookah. “Fifty years of conclusive OPS plus FIP and OAVG data dictate it must be so.”
Come to think of it, that probably is what most Americans think science is. The other half think it’s Anthony “I Am Soyence” Fauci.
Where were we? Ah yes, cat claws!
The truth is I’ve give up on trimming Bud’s claws. If I notice a really long one I’ll try to trim it, but otherwise I leave the job to him and his 4-foot scratching post.
Maybe that makes me a bad caretaker, but I challenge anyone who’d stick me with that label to try trimming Buddy’s claws.
The little dude goes from chill and relaxed to demonic in a millisecond. He yowls, he thrashes, he flails with claws out and tries to bite any flesh he can reach, no matter how careful I am to try at the “right” time, how gentle I handle him, how careful I am to avoid the quick.
Bribe him with treats? Hah! He will stop yowling and thrashing about with murderous intent just long enough to gobble down the yums, then return to being a whirlwind of claws and teeth without skipping a beat.
And you should hear him. It sounds like I’m torturing Elmo, for crying out loud.
Thankfully he doesn’t hold a grudge and if I give up on trimming, he’ll be ready to plop down into my lap within minutes.
It’s generally understood that all that ghastly claw trimming nonsense is behind us, and we shall speak no more of it.
Speaking of ghastly business, the below video started auto-playing while I was on the throne and filling the idle time by searching for cat-related news:
