NEW YORK— Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped from New York City’s Central Park Zoo, died from a traumatic impact, zoologists confirmed a day after it reportedly flew into a building, with further testing planned to determine if the owl may have been sick.
Police are still seeking to arrest whoever let Flaco out of its enclosure at the Central Park Zoo a year ago.
Flaco had been in good physical shape, the necropsy found, succeeding in catching prey even though it had no experience hunting because it came to the zoo as a fledgling 13 years earlier. According to the necropsy report released Saturday, the owl weighed 1.89 kilograms (4.1 pounds), just 2 percent less than when it was last measured at the zoo.
Flaco was found dead Friday on a sidewalk after apparently hitting a building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
“The main impact appears to have been to the body, as there was substantial hemorrhage under the sternum and in the back of the body cavity around the liver,” the report said.
The Central Park Zoo put the blame squarely on the person who cut open Flaco’s enclosure. But they’re investigating illness as a possible factor, and plan to release an update in around two weeks.
“This will include microscopic examination of tissue samples; toxicology tests to evaluate potential exposures to rodenticides or other toxins; and testing for infectious diseases such as West Nile Virus and Avian Influenza,” the zoo’s statement said.
Flaco fans who listened for his nightly hooting in on the Upper West Side reported it'd gone quiet in the days before its death, and theorized that it may have been ill.
