Manhattan – Page 2 – Pain In The Bud

Playland: Riding A 100-Year-Old Roller Coaster At New York’s Historic Amusement Park

New to kids and nostalgic to adults, Playland means summer for New Yorkers. PITB visits the National Historic Landmark.

“You know,” I said to my niece, rapping my knuckles against a wooden support beam of Playland’s Dragon Coaster, “they built this thing 100 years ago.”

Her eyes widened. At 10 years old and already wise beyond her years, she smelled a joke at her expense by her constantly wise-cracking uncle. (I once told her and her sister that my cat had a vast collection of Pokémon cards, and that he almost certainly had the ultra-rare cards they coveted. At the time, their young minds didn’t question it and wanted to propose trades with Buddy, but now it comes up every time I tell them something absurd.)

“No it wasn’t!” my niece said as we stood in line to ride the venerable and historic wooden coaster.

My brother chimed in.

“It says it right there,” he said, pointing to a sign above the queue. “This roller coaster was built in 1929, the year the park opened.”

Playland’s ferris wheel and the manicured midway that runs the length of the park, with a giant fountain on one end and a stage for outdoor performances on the other. Credit: PITB

The Dragon Coaster is indeed almost a 100 years old, and to a 10-year-old a century is an incomprehensible amount of time. Mentioning the ride’s age almost backfired on us and we had to assure the kids the ride was safe.

Truth be told, the Dragon Coaster doesn’t look safe. It’s all aging wooden beams, rusting rivets and peeling paint, and the coaster rattles as it allows gravity to do the bulk of the work, with an initial 80-foot drop propelling the cars over 3,400 feet of shuddering track. But it passes inspection every year and it’s a relic of a time when things were built to different standards.

The iconic coaster’s history also extends to pop culture: Tom Hanks rode the Dragon Coaster in the 1988 film, Big, as did Mariah Carey in the video for her 1995 hit Fantasy. In 1987, it was featured prominently in the psychological thriller Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas.

Tom Hanks at Rye Playland — A young Tom Hanks on Playland’s boardwalk in Big (1988). The “Zoltar” machine that grants Hanks’ wish in the movie is still in the park and has been moved to the midway.

Dragon Coaster at Rye Playland — The Dragon Coaster’s front entrance in September of 2024. Credit: PITB

My brother and I rode the Dragon Coaster when we were kids, as did my mom and her friends in their youth. If you grew up in Westchester County, the Bronx or Manhattan, chances are that Playland was a big part of your summers.

I have vague memories of the park from early childhood, fond memories of screaming on rides like the Mind Scrambler in my teenage years, fresher memories of taking my little charges there when I was a summer camp counselor, and new memories formed annually as I bring my brother’s kids.

Taking the kids to the amusement park was one of the things I most looked forward to when I became an uncle, and they’re at the age now where they really love it. Visiting the park brought on waves of nostalgia (“Good Vibrations” by Marky Marky and the Funky Bunch blasted from the PA when we first arrived), the happiness of seeing the kids’ eyes light up with joy, and the realization that even though I get dizzy and my stomach doesn’t appreciate rapid changes in gravity and direction anymore, some rides are still a hell of a lot of fun as an adult.

The Carousel at Playland — The medium-size version of three carousels at Playland in Rye, NY, September 2024. Credit: PITB.

We returned this year to find new rides, refurbished shops and lots of construction. Playland is in the middle of yet another refresh, this time to the tune of $150 million, leaving some rides and areas of the park dark to visitors.

Playland was built on 280 acres of prime waterfront real estate on the Long Island Sound and it’s very much a product of its time. Although it has seen its share of retrofits and refurbishment over almost century of existence, there’s no hiding the fact that it was constructed in the 1920s.

The structures — which include an entrance plaza, an ice casino and arcade, a pool, a beachfront boardwalk and a central tower — were built in an Art Deco style, with a consistent limestone, orange and emerald green color scheme.

As a kid my favorite ride was the Mind Scrambler, a blackout ride variation on the classic Scrambler housed within a dome. I remember waiting on line with my friends, hoping we’d get a good song for the ride, which was adorned with lots of neon and blacklights for maximum funkiness and disorientation.

Alas, messing around on a ride like that doesn’t bring good results. In a sequence of events that’s still difficult to believe, a seven-year-old girl was killed when she was thrown from the Mind Scrambler in 2004.

Playland's Mind Scrambler — The exterior Mind Scrambler shortly before the darkride was dismantled following a series of deaths.

Three summers later, park management promoted a 21-year-old Playland employee who was working the night the girl was killed, making her the ride’s manager. She died that summer on the same ride. An investigation found she was kneeling backwards in her seat when she was thrown from the Scrambler just 20 seconds in.

The woman’s death prompted the park’s management to shut the ride down, a decision that was later made permanent despite the fact that “user error” was to blame.

Playland during the Depression — Riders on the Dragon Coaster during the Great Depression. Credit: Rye Historical Society

Playland poster — A poster from the 1930s showing a bird’s eye view of Playland in Rye, NY. Note the beaches and the boardwalk below the park and the adjacent suburban neighborhood. Very little about the park’s layout or the neighborhood has changed over the years. Credit: Rye Historical Society

A close second favorite was the Music Express, a straightforward moderate speed ride that was also known for pumping out loud pop hits. I have fond memories of riding the Music Express to everything from the Spin Doctors’ Two Princes and Technotronics’ Move This, to Blues Traveler’s Run Around and Snow’s ludicrous summer hit, Informer.

The Music Express was out of commission last summer, but this time it was back in action.

“We’ve gotta ride this!” I told my nieces. Just when I was thinking it was getting a little intense, it slowed down. That wasn’t so bad, I thought. Then it spun up again, faster than before, this time spinning backwards. I felt like I’d downed a six pack of beer in a half hour when I stumbled off the damn thing.

I wisely limited myself to less strenuous rides for the rest of the night, including the bumper cars, Ferris wheel and the Zombie Castle. At seven years old, my younger niece isn’t big enough yet to ride some of the attractions by herself, and that’s when the Funcle steps in. Thankfully she’d had her fill of stomach-churners too.

Above: A classic swing ride at rest, left, and mid-sequence as it twirls riders through the air. Credit: PITB

Playland became a National Historic Landmark in 1987, and is unique among amusement parks in the US — and possibly the world — in that it’s government-owned. That’s because the people who live in the area, a wealthy waterfront enclave, were worried about growing crowds, traffic and “unsavory” people. In the 1920s at the urging of the community, Westchester County purchased the land, folded several smaller waterfront operations into a single park, and began drafting plans for a larger destination in the Art Deco style popular at the time.

While Art Deco is typically associated with structures like the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, as well as the Chicago Board of Trade skyscraper, the jazz-age aesthetic is another feature that makes Playland so unique.

Zombie Castle at Playland — The Zombie Castle was built in the 1930s with a different theme, then was refurbished in the late 1960s, perhaps in response to the success of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, which was released in 1968. This image shows the Zombie Castle on September 22, 2024. Credit: PITB

Remarkably, many of the attractions are as old as the park itself, including the aforementioned Dragon Coaster, The Whip, and the original carousel. Several of the older rides were designed and manufactured by engineer W.F. Mengels, the “Wizard of Coney Island” who was famous for designing many of that iconic park’s rides.

Taking the kids to Legoland in New York earlier this summer felt like a soulless experience, like paying to sit through a four-hour commercial for eponymous toys. Every ride was tied to a Lego intellectual property, every note of the piped-in music a corporate composition, every ride forcing you to exit via attached gift shops where $300 play sets beckoned to the children.

Even the “waterpark” had a corporate regimen to it: you’re required to book “appointments” ahead of time and get precisely 20 minutes to cool off under sprinklers on a Lego pirate-themed water playground, complete with Lego palm trees and Lego ships while the next group queues in the afternoon sun and watches, willing time to go faster.

Playland may not be as polished, but the experience feels more honest, and there’s no doubt the kids had more fun here. If I were a betting man, I’d wager Playland will still be there when they have kids of their own, while Legoland will be consigned to the dustbin of themed parks that don’t give you a reason to come back.

The Whip at Coney Island — Coney Island’s version of The Whip designed by W.F. Mengels. Undated but likely in the 1910s.

A sign with original architectural drawings of The Whip from 1928, explaining “free-pivoting joints, combined with centrigual force, generates twists and turns which change with every rotation.”

Kiddyland is a section of the park for the little ones. It has a miniature roller coaster, a tiny carousel, and at least a half dozen other rides for young kids.

A view from the Ferris wheel at Rye Playland (PITB)

The Whip is one of the park’s original rides, built in 1928.

Review: A Quiet Place: Day One’s Frodo The Cat Steals The Show

A rare prequel that matches or exceeds the original, Day One explores relationships feline and human in a harrowing, life-or-death situation. With its Manhattan setting and post-apocalyptic vibe, the film also invites comparisons to the chaos and insanity of 9/11, when shocked survivors were just beginning to grapple with what they’d experienced.

If there’s one thing director Michael Sarnoski knows about cat people, it’s that putting a feline in danger is a reliably manipulative way to ratchet up tension.

Frodo the cat, therapy pet to Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam in A Quiet Place: Day One, is every bit the handsome co-star.

In a story about a woman and her cat trying to survive an apocalyptic event in New York City, the cat gets plenty of screen time. There are entire sequences following the little guy as he dashes away from danger (and sometimes toward it) and as he follows his feline instincts, which might not be the right instincts in a world that suddenly has its rules rewritten.

A Quiet Place: Day One is the third installment of the Quiet Place films. The first one thrilled audiences with a tight script, tense acting and a quiet/loud dynamic that made the absence of sound more sinister than sound itself.

A Quiet Place (2018) and its sequel (2020) take place about 16 months after the arrival of monstrous creatures of indeterminate origin. The aliens are blind, but that doesn’t impede their ability to rampage through human cities. They have an unearthly sensitivity to sound and can echolocate. Even a whisper can be enough to draw their attention if they’re in relatively close proximity.

We meet the Abbott family (John Krasinski, Emily Blunt and their children) some 16 months after the initial invasion, when they’re living silently on their isolated farm in upstate New York.

The audience is told nothing about where the creatures came from or what they are, and except for a short sequence in the very beginning of the sequel, we don’t see their arrival. The first two films deal exclusively with the aftermath, with scattered survivors trying to eke out an existence.

Frodo the Cat — A curious Frodo watches Quinn’s character, Eric, emerge gasping from a flooded subway station. Credit: Paramount

Day One is a different beast entirely, both from a plot perspective and through the lens of Sarnoski, who leaves his fingerprints all over the franchise and imbues the prequel with a surprisingly poignant relationship between Nyong’o’s Sam and Joseph Quinn’s Eric, a young British student who moved to New York for law school. (If you’re a fan of Stranger Things, you’ll know Quinn as Eddie Munson, the D&D-playing metalhead and stand-out character from the show’s fourth season. He also had a brief appearance in the seventh season of Game of Thrones, and will appear in the upcoming sequel to Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.)

Sam and Eric are strangers thrown together by circumstance and quickly grow close. Eric, overwhelmed by the world being turned upside down in a country he’s not yet accustomed to, needs someone to latch onto. Sam, who has isolated herself as she wastes away from cancer, finds the companionship she didn’t know she needed.

While tens of thousands of New Yorkers heed the US military’s call to head to South Street Seaport for evacuation via boats, as the Death Angels apparently cannot swim, Sam is determined to reach Patsy’s pizzeria in Harlem, where she believes the world’s last slice of their beloved thin-crust pizza awaits. Unlike the other survivors, she doesn’t have the possibility of a future if she makes it to safety.

Walking from Chinatown in lower Manhattan to Patsy’s in Harlem is a hike, about nine miles as the crow flies. It would take most people the better part of three hours to walk under normal circumstances. In an invasion, when the slightest sound can mean death, it’s an extraordinarily dangerous and long journey.

Still, being determined to get the very last slice of pizza in an apocalypse is precisely the sort of ridiculous thing I’d do, so I sympathize with Sam.

Day One — In an amusing scene early in the film, a man in a bodega tells Nyong’o’s Sam she can’t have a cat in the store — while his own shop cat lounges on the counter next to him. Bonus point for the Knicks hat. Credit: Paramount

As for Frodo, he’s one cute little dude! I appreciate the fact that Michael Sarnoski elected to have an adult cat rather than a kitten, not because I have anything against kittens, but because Frodo is a reminder that felines of all ages are beautiful, and there are plenty of Frodos in shelters.

Nico and Schnitzel, the cats who play Frodo, are great animal actors. In one scene Frodo sees Quinn emerge from a flooded subway and stops, curiosity playing across his little face. He looks at the stranger and his mouth opens ever so slightly, as if in shock. How many takes did Sarnoski need to get that?

Frodo is also a survivor. His hunting instincts kick in when he sees a rat, drawing him closer to danger, and at one point curiosity beckons him toward the ruined shell of a building where the Death Angels are apparently nesting.

Incredibly, he never meows. There are times when he freaks out and runs, as cats are known to do, but he reliably finds his way back to Sam, and he has a knack for remaining absolutely still and silent when he needs to be.

There were so many moments when I imagined myself in Sam’s shoes and Buddy in Frodo’s paws, and we’d have been dead in all of them. As I noted in my post about the “Quiet Place Challenge” trend on social media, the Budster and I would have a life expectancy of approximately 60 seconds in the film’s world. Death by Buddy would be my fate, as inescapable as his mealtime screeching.

There is also a visceral 9-11 feel to the opening sequences of the invasion, and any New Yorker old enough to remember that day will be reminded of it. It’s impossible not to with the scenes of ash-covered survivors huddled inside buildings, crowds of dead-eyed people walking away from disaster and the eerie sight of a sooty Manhattan bereft of its usual bustle and life.

There are of course plot holes in Day One, or at least unanswered questions to things that don’t seem to make sense. When the military’s helicopters sweep over Manhattan, announcing via loudspeakers that survivors should head to the ports because “the enemy cannot swim,” I wondered: did these aliens just land in Manhattan? If so, why? Surely they don’t recognize the arbitrary municipal boundaries of humanity, and the whole area is one seemingly endless metropolis.

The Death Angels are obviously sentient, but whether they’re sapient is another matter. They don’t seem to have much in the way of a sense of self-preservation, and there is no method to their madness. During the aforementioned helicopter scene, the characters watch as hundreds of Death Angels race toward lower Manhattan, drawn by the sound of the choppers and the loudspeaker. It’s impossible not to think it would be trivial to draw the lot of them with the loudest possible sound, then drop a few daisy cutters on them and call it a day.

Of course if any of that happened there would be no movie and no drama, so as with most stories like this, it’s best to let the film pull you along without stopping to over-analyze what you’re seeing.

If you’ve watched the first two films, you also know the reasons for the invasion are nebulous. The Death Angels don’t eat their kills, as Krasinski’s Lee Abbott learned, and if they’re the vanguard of a more intelligent species, doing all the dirty work before the masters arrive, well, we’ve yet to see who’s pulling the strings.

Overall, like horror master Mike Flanagan taking on a sequel to the tepid Ouiji earlier in his career, Sarnoski doesn’t view the fact that Day One is a prequel as an excuse to phone in a performance. He approaches the film with enthusiasm and energy as if it’s one of his own creations, and that’s evident in every frame. It’s a Sarnoski movie that happens to be a genre film, not the other way round.

There’s a surprising poignancy to Day One that makes it more than the sum of its parts. We’re not here to spoil anything, but if you’re a cat lover, we will say that Day One doesn’t pull an I Am Legend. You can watch the film with reassurance that Sarnoski has better tricks up his sleeve for stirring your emotions than gratuitous animal-involved violence.

It’s rare when a sequel or a prequel reaches the same heights as the original. How many of us wish franchises like Alien and The Matrix stopped at one film? Thankfully that’s not the case here. There’s life in A Quiet Place yet, and like the best science fiction, it’s a film that uses extraordinary circumstances to tell a very human story.

Perhaps the best part is the experience has made a cat lover of Nyong’o. In a short promo (below), she explains that she’s always been afraid of cats, viewing them as miniature lions.

“Now,” she says with a laugh, “somehow, I love them!”

She’s not just saying that either. After filming Day One, she adopted her own cat, Yoyo, and it takes just a glance at her Instagram page, which is festooned with photos of the orange tabby, to know that she really does love the little guy.

Would Your Cat Survive The ‘Quiet Place Challenge’?

Buddy is many things, but he’s NOT quiet. His incessant chattiness can kill my sleep and my peace and quiet, but in the world of A Quiet Place, it would kill me! Would your cat get you killed in the movie franchise’s monster-stalked reality?

As a cat lover, big time science fiction fan and appreciator of the first two A Quiet Place installments, the very first thing I thought when I saw the trailer for A Quiet Place: Day One was “I hope the cat doesn’t meow!”

My second thought? Bud and I would be so, so dead.

Dead immediately. Dead a thousand times over.

Apparently I’m not the only one, because fans have taken to social media to participate in the “Quiet Place Challenge,” which involves reenacting some of the scenes from the movie with their own cats to see if their furry overlords can stay silent.

As PITB readers know, Buddy never shuts up. He’s got something to say about everything, he often narrates his activities in real time, and he’s got an entire meowing ritual that starts at least a half hour before Food O’Clock, gaining in volume and annoyingness until a fresh bowl of turkey is placed before him. His personal patois, the Buddinese dialect, makes heavy use of trills, chirps, grunts, chuffs and sniffs to elaborate on his meows.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Quiet Place movies, they imagine a world that’s been invaded by so-called Death Angels, dread creatures of extrasolar provenance who are completely blind, but have extraordinarily sensitive hearing. The first movie, about a family surviving on their farm in upstate New York months after the initial invasion, was universally lauded for its taut script, effective tension and novel use of a quiet/loud dynamic that is a marked departure from the usual horror-thriller formula.

In A Quiet Place (2018), its 2020 sequel and the recently-released prequel, Day One, entire minutes pass soundlessly. As a viewer you can’t help but wince and tense up when a character errs and makes noise, knowing the consequences can be immediately tragic.

There’s simply no way Bud and I would survive more than five minutes, and if I had to put money on it, I’d wager we’d probably be dead within 60 seconds of the terrifying monsters showing up.

Indeed, the movie doesn’t dither: the Death Angels make planetfall at around the 12 minute mark. Mild spoilers from the beginning of the film follow:

12:31 – On Chinatown’s ruined Pell Street, within a haze of dust so thick you can’t see more than a few feet in any direction, a man shouts loudly into his smartphone, telling the person on the other end that something meteor-like had landed just a few hundred feet away. He’s pulled suddenly and violently into the smog, his scream ending as abruptly as it began. Verdict: Death by Buddy. He’d probably meow in protest at the dust and get us both killed immediately.

12:53 – A female National Guard soldier sees Nyong’o’s Sam and shouts at her to take cover. The guardswoman’s radio crackles with the panicked screams of her comrades saying the enemy is everywhere, and then she’s dispatched as quickly as the guy on the phone. Verdict: Death by Buddy. He’d almost certainly huff derisively at the soldier’s order to take cover, and we’d both be crushed underneath the foot of one of the lumbering beasts.

13:34 – Sam huddles behind a vehicle with another woman when a panicked man screams, drawing the aliens like moths to a flame. Verdict: Death by Buddy. Little dude’s default reaction when he’s scared is to run screaming and hide behind my legs. He’d draw the monsters right to us and we’d die.

13:50 – Sam wakes up inside a theater several minutes after an explosion knocked her out. She’s about to speak when Djimon Hounsou’s Henri clamps a hand over her mouth and raises a finger to his lips. Unfortunately that doesn’t work with a cat. Verdict: Death by Buddy. Attempts to get him to shut up would be fruitless, and while I’d know my only chance for survival would be to throw him like a football so the aliens track his indignant screech, I wouldn’t have the heart to do it. We’d die together.

Frodo, the feline co-star of Day One and “service cat” to Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam, is precisely the opposite. He’s a Good Boy extraordinaire, consistently calm in his mother’s arms and reliably silent when he needs to be.

Without meows to rely on, director Michael Sarnoski gets quite a performance out of Nico and Schnitzel, the two cats who play Frodo. They’re expressive felines who could teach Nicolas Cage a thing or two about how to emote with subtlety, as in one scene when Frodo sees a man emerge gasping from a flooded subway station. Frodo regards the stranger with curiosity, his little face registering surprise at the man’s sudden appearance with just the slightest twitch of his mouth and whiskers.

It’s effective and very cute, but we never forget about the incredible danger that faces Frodo and Sam as they ~~return the One Ring to Mount Doom~~ navigate the ruins of New York City amid blind predators with extraordinarily sensitive hearing.

buddyroarbanner — “LOL I got you killed, dude! Hey! Wake up! I’m hungry! Turkey time! I’ll take my evening meal on the balcony and dine al fresco this evening, okay? Big Bud? Dude?”

If Day One’s world was reality — and I’m extremely thankful it’s not — I suppose it’s possible I’d get lucky if we were in a deep subterranean level of a building for some odd reason, and if Bud decided it’s not worth disturbing his nap to investigate the ruckus above.

But the moment his belly rumbles and he starts screeching for yums, or the second he gets it into his little head that he just has to tell me his latest theory regarding entangled subatomic particles, it would all be over, for me at least. I could totally see Bud making noise, then dashing to his customary hiding place behind my legs while a “Death Angel” impales me with one of its giant claws.

What about the rest of you? Is your cat a Frodo, a Bud or another sort entirely? Would you be dead as quickly as we would be, or do you think you could survive with your furry pal?

Buddy The Cat’s New Year’s Meowin’ Eve!

Join tens of thousands of other cats and ring in the New Year in style with your favorite feline music artists and comedians!

Tune into Channel Noine for Buddy the Cat’s New Year’s Meowin’ Eve with coverage beginning at 8 p.m.!

Host Buddy the Cat will take you straight into the New Year with performances by Clawplay, human-felino boy band Six Harmonies, comedian Bill Purr, rock legends The Pawlice and many more!

Featuring the one and only huge ball of yarn that will drop at midnight.

What better way to ring in the New Year and start 2024 off with a bang? Happy New Year!

Host Buddy the Cat

The Pawlice

Thousands of cats will gather in Times Square for the festivities.

Clawplay

Thousands of cats will gather in Times Square for the festivities.

Six Harmonies, the first feline-human boy band.

Comedian Bill Purr

Owl’s Well That Ends Well For Manhattan’s Most Famous Wild Animal

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.

Flaco NYC — 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.

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.