NYC Celebrates As Flaco The Freedom Owl Feasts On A Rat

NEW YORK CITY ? Flaco the freedom owl is learning to live in the wild, according to devotees documenting his flight through Central Park.

The Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped the Central Park Zoo earlier this month has been seen hunting rats in the park, assuaging fears that the small-zoo creature wouldn't be able to cut it in the big city.

Don't believe it? There are images of dead rats and owl pellets (er, maybe google it before you click it) to prove it.

"For everyone saying Flaco couldn't survive on his own, here he is with a rat last night!" Tweeted one uptown birder. "We need all the help we can get with these rats! Let Flaco live free!"

Twitter user JacquelineUWS, the uptown birder who captured images of Flaco's forest feast, told followers the owl had hunted the rat and that it was not one of the dead rodents zoo officials have been using to lure Flaco into a net (with not much success).

"This warms my heart," tweeted Bobby Caina Calvan. "Flaco is a killer after all. Long live Flaco!"

But the celebration was tempered by the concern of New Yorkers familiar with the poisonous lengths the city will go to when it comes to killing its rodents.

"I am worried about all the rodenticide targeted at mice & rats which can pass secondarily to the raptors," Katherine Herzog wrote. "Many Central Park hawks have died this way."

Central Park Zoo officials have been in pursuit of Flaco since he was discovered missing from a vandalized cage on the evening of Feb. 2.

Flaco's flight to freedom has included a photo shoot on Madison Avenue, window-shopping at Bergdorf's, and the amassing of a massive fan base, dozens of whom gathered last weekend in Central Park.

?I?ve taken so many pictures of him ... getting harassed by hawks, fluffing up, his orange eyes, sneezing," birder Anke Frohlich told Patch.

But the admiration came with anguish for Steven Harris, a professional photographer from Park Slope who feared Flaco would not know how to hunt after a decade of catered life at the zoo.

?He may die,? Harris said, ?because he may not know how to feed himself.?

Thus images posted over the weekend of Flaco feasting on a dead rat (and passing pellets) delighted, rather than disgusted, the city.

"The real star of #SuperbOwl Sunday is Flaco, the escaped Eurasian Eagle-Owl," wrote Ian Kwok. "Still at large in Central Park."