Flaco the Owl died. Also congestion cats. I mean taxes.

Have you seen this thing with Flaco the Owl who escaped from the Central Park zoo going on a year ago? If you haven't you obviously don't live in New York City. At least in Manhattan, this owl has become our crowdsourced pet. 

When I just wrote "crowdsourced pet" it reminded me of an embarrassing error I made once while reading a Swedish article. The article, written in Swedish, talked about a guy who crammed, what I read to be "the crowd's cat" in his pocket. I thought it was an article about animal cruelty or something. I mean, he jammed a cat in his pocket? 

But when I mentioned this whole cat shenanigan to a Swedish friend of mine, I found out the hard way (ie when she laughed uproariously at me) that it was an article about a guy embezzling tax dollars.

IN MY DEFENSE, the Swedish word for tax is "skatt" and the word for cat is "katt" so if you put the word for "crowd" in front, you can very easily see how you'd go from Crowdskatt (congestion tax) to Crowdskatt (which would appear to mean the crowd's cat) . Give me a break we've been to Istanbul. I've seen Crowd's Cats!!)

Back on track now - Flaco the Owl. Manhattan's crowdsourced pet. Although now that I'm thinking about it and considering Manhattan is considering a congestion tax... I should write a letter and suggest we just get ourselves a cat instead. Especially now that Flaco is gone. 

Only a couple days ago I told Tom I hoped Flaco the Owl would perch on our balcony. You're not supposed to feed him, but I was thinking it would be hard not to feed him. I'd run right down and get him a tray of hamburger from the bodega.

Anyway, Flaco died. He smashed into a building. I guess it was bound to happen. Mostly people thought he'd die after eating a rat that had been poisoned, or get hit by a car like that other owl.

I really feel surprisingly sad about Flaco.

Today I read that on TikTok, they are calling Manhattan "Work Island." As in, "Why would you spend Saturday night partying on Work Island when you could just stay in Brooklyn?"

There's a lot I could say about that, but I can't be bothered by such trivialities while I'm in mourning.