Who??

“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare penned that query for “Romeo and Juliet” and it stuck! Names are sticky whether we like the name given to us or not. My “nom de plum” is my maternal grandmother’s name and my middle name. I loved her and her name. We want to know someone by name, to feel familiar in that familial way of belonging with and to one another. I suspect that’s why we also name our pets to make them one of us /ours. We also give names to those other creatures that in no way ever could belong to us. I’m talking about the most mysterious beings among us: creatures of the wild. How we come to connect with them, in part, is by conferring names of our choosing upon them. For example, once a baby alligator  whose given name was Alfonso, began life within the confines of this Florida condo development. Of course, Alfonso had no idea she/he had a name and those who named her/him seemed to have no idea that one day she/he would become a full grown carnivore! That didn’t stop anyone from taking Alfonso into the communal family until one day, when it was almost too late, trappers came to move Alfonso to a more conducive (civilized) place to live. What were they thinking? Why do we name a wild creature? I have been wondering this since I read about"Flaco the Owl” in the Sunday New York Times (Feb. 4).

For thirteen years, Flaco, so-called, lived in captivity at the Central Park Zoo. Of Eurasian descent, he is the only one of his species living in NYC. The story says Flaco “escaped,” but not without the help of a human who a year ago cut the mesh overhead that had confined this wild bird. Flaco took flight one night, as owls are want to do, and has been flying freely around Manhattan skyscrapers and towers and tall trees in the park, not far from where he used to live.

Birdwatchers, of which I am a card-carrying member, have scoped him out and offer a “hoot route” map for anyone who wants to keep track of Flaco’s whereabouts. His eyes are his most distinguishing feature, setting him apart from all the other nameless owls out and about at night in the city. His eyes are not yellow but orange. Flaco has been peering, or shall we say staring, into apartments all over Fifth Avenue. Early attempts to capture and return Flaco to the zoo were unsuccessful, and so it was determined he should remain at large. Humans it seems had to come to terms with the nature of this mysterious being who can fly up to 10,000 feet with its wing span of over six feet. My heart goes out to Flaco, the way it once did to Spooky the Owl when I was six years old.

Spooky lived at the Boston Museum of Science from the age of three. I knew him well because every Friday night when admission to the museum was free, my father took me and my sisters on the train into the city to see Spooky. There we sat crossed-legged and wide-eyed as the handler, wearing massive gloves up to his elbow, held Spooky before us while he told and showed us how his head could turn 180 degrees; how his vision was superior to ours in the dark; how his wings were silent in flight. Then he would release the tethered bundle of feathers in one fell swoop over our heads. WOW! Every kid on the floor said on cue. Even though I knew what was coming, I couldn’t help myself. I was awed each and every time by Spooky. In my heart of hearts I wanted Spooky to escape the man with the gloves, the museum’s fluorescent lights, and the big city lights that enthralled my six-year- old senses. I wanted to hear him hoot!

These nights in NYC, Flaco has been hooting for hours at a time with the lighted skyline as backdrop. He has no need to claim his territory, he rules the roost, as it were. Flaco is calling for a mate! A few birders know there is a Grand Dame of Owls named Gertrude(!) living in the park. They are hoping for a “Romeo and Juliet” scene. I am not.

I am secretly hoping that Flaco discovers for himself, before it’s too late, that he can soar 10,000 feet above it all. He may not know where to go, but that’s okay, most of us don’t. We like to think we do, and so we live our lives accordingly, until one day the mesh above our heads is torn asunder. That is the moment of truth when we must come to terms with who we are meant to be before it’s too late.

One day, when my son was six, I took him to the Boston Museum. I wondered about Spooky’s fate after so many years. He had died in captivity at the age of 38, outliving any other Great Horned Owl by nearly 30 years! Museum people still refer to him by his given name, Spooky. He wasn’t at all spooky to me or anyone who recalls that mystery with wings. One of my all time favorite poems which I drove miles to hear the author read aloud is “The Owl and the Lightning”:

. . . .”This was the law on the night the owl was arrested. He landed on the top floor; through the open window of apartment 14-E across the hall, a solemn white bird bending the curtain rod. In the cackling glow of the television, his head swiveled, his eyes black. The cops were called and threw a horse blanket over the owl, a bundle kicking. Soon after, lightning jabbed the building, hit apartment 14-E, scattering bricks from the roof like beads from a broken necklace.

The sky

blasted white, detonation of thunder.

Ten years old at the window, I knew then that God was not the man in my mother’s holy magazines, touching fingertips to dying foreheads with the half-smile of an athlete signing autographs. God must be an owl, electricity coursing through the hollow bones, a white wing brushing the building.” Martin Espada From “Imagine the Angels of Bread” (New York Times Poem of the New Year in 1996).