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On a gray Wednesday afternoon in January, I took the E train to Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood to interview a parrot.
I was working on what just might have been the most challenging assignment I have tackled in my four-plus years as a Metro reporter at The New York Times, one that ultimately put me in touch with New York City’s first rat czar, a sex therapist, a high-wire artist, a couple of ironworkers and a certain large, yellow Sesame Street character.
The subject was Flaco, a Eurasian eagle-owl, and his year on the loose in Manhattan. A brief recap for those who missed the story:
Last February, someone cut the mesh on the Central Park Zoo enclosure that had been Flaco’s home for nearly all of his 13 years, allowing him to fly off. Zoo officials effectively gave up trying to retrieve him after he showed that he was in tune with his essential owl-ness and could fend for himself in Central Park.
I chronicled Flaco’s early days of freedom in several articles and became invested in his fate. What started as a quirky crime story had turned into an unlikely tale of survival. I was rooting for the guy.
Soon, though, I returned to my regular diet of breaking news about humans, my main responsibility on the Metro desk. But because Flaco had an avid fan base, I was able to track him on social media. That’s how I knew where to spot him last summer in one of his favorite trees, while my wife and I rode bikes through Central Park. He looked pretty comfortable.
I had no plans to write about Flaco again. But then, he began to approach one year of freedom.
Plenty had been written about the novelty of Flaco’s new life and its meaning to those caught up in his story. It was Nestor Ramos, Metro’s top editor, who had the idea of trying to capture what that life was like from Flaco’s perspective. Or as my editor for the article, Shauntel Lowe, put it: What is his bird’s-eye view?
In November, we caught a break when Flaco left Central Park’s relative safety and turned up in the East Village, allowing us to track him as he began to explore new, unfamiliar territory. Soon, he was perched on the Upper West Side.
It was an exhilarating twist. But the assignment still gave me trouble. My subject couldn’t tell me anything, even if he wanted to. Eventually, we decided to rely on interviews with bird experts and include the voices of people who had been following Flaco closely and those who had encountered him on their windowsills or air-conditioners.
From there, we got creative. Flaco was feasting on rats, so it seemed like a good idea to speak with Kathleen Corradi, the city’s first director of rodent mitigation. Flaco was also lacking a mate. So Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who was named New York’s honorary loneliness ambassador by Gov. Kathy Hochul, seemed worth a try.
To get a sense of Flaco’s elevated view of the city, I considered what kind of people spend time at great heights. That led me to the high-wire artist Philippe Petit; the radio traffic reporter Tom Kaminski; Charles Semowich, who plays the carillon in the 392-foot tower of Riverside Church in Manhattan; and Jason Chadee and Conrad Lazare, ironworkers whose labors have helped shape Manhattan’s skyline. I interviewed them at their union hall in Astoria, Queens.
After that, I moved on to my interview wish list. There were a number of people who didn’t come through: the singer of a hit song involving a bird, a rapper known to have an affinity for owls, even the football player Joe Flacco.
One did: Big Bird. I believe it was my wife who suggested I try him. After all, he is a prominent bird closely linked with Manhattan. I found a Sesame Street press representative who was happy to humor me and obtain a statement from “the big guy.”
By then, I had plenty of material — ornithology, a chronology, Manhattan geography, a dose of whimsy — but was still unsure about how to put it all together.
It may have been simple desperation that led to my “aha” moment. I began to think of the people I was talking to as characters inhabiting Flaco’s New York, and their comments as something a neighbor would say.
The parrot was my editor’s idea. She knew you can’t really “interview” a parrot but felt it was in the spirit of this unconventional article. I was skeptical, but happy to try.
I found a couple in Chelsea with two parrots. One, Rachel, an African gray, was supposedly quite talkative. I spent the better part of an hour plying her with almonds, chatting with Walter Mullin, one of her owners, and asking the bird occasional questions like: “What do you think it’s like outside?”
Rachel didn’t give me anything usable. She didn’t even speak until I was getting ready to leave and the other parrot, Toby started squawking. “Quiet,” Rachel said, over and over.
Luckily, I had many sources who were more forthcoming, something readers responded to when the article was published this month. It was good reminder that even if your subject can’t speak for himself, there are still plenty of people you can talk to.
