Birdwatching (Sort Of)
Everything about Flaco, the owl that escaped its enclosure in Central Park Zoo and is now positively thriving as a free owl, is perfect.
Manhattan Bird Alert @BirdCentralPark
I love every picture of him, looking beautiful and absolutely evading every attempt at rescuing him. Rescuing him? He is doing great, actually. I’d like to believe he’s surprised even himself — look what I can do! catching so many rats! — but at the same time, it’s nice to imagine there are things we can just know without really knowing how.
There is an owl that lives in my neighborhood, I think, though I can’t say for sure what kind. It makes a sound that is not really what I would call “classic owl”— less of a whoooo and more like a lulululu. I tried to make the sound for C. once, so we could describe it in words that would be Googleable, but it didn’t really work. “Did you mean this?” Google asked, but I didn’t quite know what I meant.
One night, during the summer, I was in the backyard, and the owl flew into our neighbor’s tree. It was up there, lululu-ing so close to me. But it was dark, and it must’ve been way at the top. I still couldn’t find it.
“Is this like the time you saw the condor?” is a running joke in my house, one that was also made over the backyard owl. For the record, I did see a condor when we were in California some years ago. Or, at least, it was the biggest fucking bird I’ve ever seen — like, so big I had a hard time even integrating what I saw into what I previously believed about how big a bird could be.
I yelled, “IS THAT A CONDOR??????” to C., who hilariously answered, “Where?” It was RIGHT THERE! The BIGGEST FUCKING BIRD ON THE PLANET! BETWEEN THE TREES AND SORT OF TO THE RIGHT OF THAT CLEARING!
Somehow, C. did not see the condor, though it was literally the largest possible thing in the fucking sky, like it was a plane or something, swooping around before it disappeared into the valley.
A different, more patient version of me would be into birdwatching as, like, an actual hobby. I think the fact that I have done absolutely nothing to get into it is probably a good indicator that I’m interested only insofar as I imagine birdwatching me to be someone with extensive daytime free time, who is equipped to deal with disappointments in a way real me is not.
But isn’t it funnier this way? In the same way Flaco is funny — we’re both out here, stumbling into things you wouldn’t believe.