Dick Hubert’s Worldview: Flaco the Owl stalks real vermin to survive; Trump calls opponents vermin to thrive

November 23, 2023 at 1:00 a.m.

The Manhattan Bird Alert reports that Flaco the Owl, who escaped from the Central Park Zoo Feb. 2 when his habitat was vandalized, has returned to his favorite Central Park oak tree after a month’s long disappearance. There were fears that he might succumb to the elements. But his innate hunting instincts kicked in and Flaco looks better than ever. (Courtesy photo of Manhattan Bird Alert)

It’s Thanksgiving Weekend.

Let’s start with some heartening news.

And then, let’s not look away from the awful.

Can we all give a cheer for Flaco, the Eurasian Eagle-Owl who has mysteriously and happily returned to his now favorite oak tree in New York City’s Central Park last week?

You may or may not remember that dreaded day, Feb. 2, 2023, when a vicious vandal got into the Central Park Zoo and cut a hole in the wire netting in the cage around Flaco’s home.

Poor Flaco, in fright I suppose, flew out of the hole in his cage and into the wilds of Central Park, alighting high in an oak tree.

His zookeepers were frantic. Flaco had always been carefully and properly fed a wholesome and healthy diet. He had no experience hunting for his own food. How would he survive?

The keepers spent days trying to lure Flaco back, to no avail. But he didn’t get weaker or famished. He grew stronger. It finally dawned on his keepers that Flaco’s inherited talent to stalk, kill, and eat prey was a perfect match for his Central Park surroundings, with abundant rats, chipmunks, squirrels, the occasional rabbit, and…what else?

They abandoned their efforts to capture Flaco.

In the process, Flaco became a media celebrity.

The London based Daily Mail included this news in an Oct. 2 report:

“Joy in Central Park today as Flaco the Eurasian Eagle-Owl has returned to claim his favorite oak tree, standing his ground despite visits from a hawk and some crows.

Anke Frohlich, a New Yorker who caught impressive photographs of Flaco in flight, said she has seen him eat four rats in one sitting.

'I have observed Flaco eat up to four rats a night, which, from what I have heard, is four times what he used to eat in the zoo,' Frohlich told DailyMail.com.

'He has definitely gotten a lot bigger since his escape and he has found his voice. His hoots are full and strong. He makes himself heard across Central Park.'

Among the customary crowd of people at the foot of Flaco's perch in the park last week, several remarked that he had grown 'much bigger'—noting the irony of his name which means 'skinny' in Spanish.

Kathy Robles, 73, who lives just over the river from Central Park in New Jersey, told DailyMail.com the bird has become 'buff' since escaping by 'using muscles he never had to use before.'

'He waddles around, so he's using his leg muscles and breast muscles,' said Robles, who has built a Flaco Facebook following of more than 500 people.

'He pounces on rats, and he's got to be really strong. His feet are amazing—they are huge, they are like big hands with these gigantic talons attached.

'People do call them murder mittens, and I can see why.' Robles said she believes New Yorkers can 'really identify' with Flaco because of his spirit of survival in the concrete jungle.

'A lot of New Yorkers might identify with being captive to, you know, your job, rat-race kind of place, New York City can be so harsh,' she said.

    The Economist writes in their 90-page guide to the coming year: Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024.
  

'And as a non-native animal, this is an immigrant basically who has taken over Central Park.

'People look at that and I think they have an affinity towards him because of his background, and that he is surviving, and nobody in the beginning thought that he would really make it.'

'I love the way a lot of New Yorkers respond to him,' she added. 'I love that they're really curious about him because a lot of people these days are not that curious about things in nature.'”

So, here’s a Thanksgiving toast to Flaco. While you’re devouring turkey (or whatever), Flaco is feasting on rats. Imagine the service he is providing free to the city! Mayor Adams ought to make him an honorary New Yorker, proclamation and all. 

Hopefully that proclamation comes before former President Trump adds Flaco to the list of those he wants to bar or deport from the country, execute, or personally destroy one way or the other in his 2023-24 Republican campaign for retribution.

And that brings me to the 

Trump campaign and The Economist

If you’re at a Thanksgiving dinner attended by a Trumpist—be it a long lost relative, a neighbor who’s had too much to drink and all inhibitions come out, or a close relative (husband, wife, sister, brother) you have to live with, just this once, keep politics out of the conversation. Talk up Taylor and Travis. Becks and Posh. Aaron Judge’s 2024 season prospects. Anything BUT politics.

And file the following away for future reference. Very near future. Like December. Before Christmas. Hanukkah. New Year’s Day. Or whatever day you celebrate.

I’m confronting it right now. The current Economist yearly issue devoted to Global Threats they see for the New Year (2024) leads with their cover story. Look closely at the split world. Do you see Trump’s outline? If not, the headline of the editorial makes it clear:

“Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024: What his victory in America’s election would mean.”

To quote two key paragraphs:

“Mr Trump’s claim to have won the election in 2020 was more than a lie: it was a cynical bet that he could manipulate and intimidate his compatriots, and it has worked. America also faces growing hostility abroad, challenged by Russia in Ukraine, by Iran and its allied militias in the Middle East and by China across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea. Those three countries loosely co-ordinate their efforts and share a vision of a new international order in which might is right and autocrats are secure.

Because maga Republicans have been planning his second term for months, Trump 2 would be more organised than Trump 1. True believers would occupy the most important positions. Mr Trump would be unbound in his pursuit of retribution, economic protectionism and theatrically extravagant deals. No wonder the prospect of a second Trump term fills the world’s parliaments and boardrooms with despair. But despair is not a plan. It is past time to impose order on anxiety.”

You can read the entire editorial at your leisure. For me, there is this reality. The entire election in 2024 will undoubtedly be decided by a few thousand swing voters in key swing states. And New York isn’t one of them.

But we are going to be on the receiving end of Trump’s promise of “retribution.”

A week ago Saturday in New Hampshire, Trump made it brutally clear whom he counts as his enemies.

To quote a Reuters dispatch: “Nov 13 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden's 2024 re-election team on Monday said former President Donald Trump had embraced the language of Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler by using the word "vermin" to refer to his political enemies.

Trump told a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday he would "root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections," repeating his false claim that fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election.

Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in November 2024, has a long history of using incendiary rhetoric to describe his perceived enemies. He told a right-leaning news site recently that immigrants who entered the country illegally were "poisoning the blood of our country."

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates also said Trump's use of the word "vermin" echoed Hitler and Mussolini.

"Using terms like that about dissent would be unrecognizable to our founders, but horrifyingly recognizable to American veterans who put on their country’s uniform in the 1940s," Bates said in a statement.

Tim Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, said words like vermin have throughout history been used by autocrats to dehumanize their critics and create a climate of fear.

"That is the language that we associate with dictators. Dictators rule by fear," said Naftali, a presidential historian. "Once you strip your opponents of their humanity you are giving license to violence against them."

Anyone in our readership have the feeling that there is a concerted effort to “strip you of your humanity so that demonstrators have the license to do violence against you?”

Trump is such a clear and present danger because too many of us find it hard to believe that neighbors and/or family and friends could buy the venom he spews.

But they do, even as he does.

Maybe you shouldn’t be so quiet at Thanksgiving dinner after all.

Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.

Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.