“ PLAY BALL” POOL & BEACH PARTY

651ST SUNDAY FUNDAY MARCH 26,

One of the central tenets of my wife’s and my marriage is: we don’t tell each other what to do. It’s not a rule so much as a guideline, one we both make an effort not to stray too far beyond. We’re both long-time fans of hard-won personal autonomy.

There’s been a big asterisk on that tenet in recent weeks, though, one perpetrated by my wife that could almost be considered borderline nagging.

It has mostly manifested itself in her repeated use of a single sentence: “Why don’t you write something about Flaco?” I’m not sure if I punctuated her phrase correctly. Do you use a question mark at the end of a sentence that is not so much a question as a directive?

Flaco, for those unaware, is an owl, specifically a Eurasian eagle-owl, who escaped from the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan on Feb. 2 after vandals cut open the wire mesh on his cage. He’s spent the last month and a half hanging around what is arguably the most famous public space in the world. Flaco was captive bred, and at first it was worried that he would starve to death because he wouldn’t know how to hunt and feed himself, and having spent most of his life in a cage that has been described as about the size of a bus stop shelter, he was not the best flier. But his flying skills have apparently greatly improved, and he seems to be thriving on a steady diet of readily available, and easily catchable, rats. And he’s become something of a celebrity. In certain New York social circles, catching sight of Flaco has more cachet than seeing J-Lo and Ben out on a tear, or overhearing Fran Lebowitz complain about the quality of the bagels or how you can’t get proper jelly beans since Schrafft’s went out of business or whatever.

Flaco also has a serious media profile, having been the subject of stories in venerable media outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, CBS, ABC, NPR, the New York Post, the New Yorker and National Geographic.

Eurasian eagle-owls are one of the biggest owl species in the world, with the Latin name Bubo bubo, with “bubo” meaning owl, arguably making them the owliest of owls. It helps that Flaco is drop-dead gorgeous, a big owl with a 6-foot wingspan, long ear tufts, and an earthy plumage that ranges from dark taupe to fawn to mocha to tiger orange.

The term for such a creature in the ecoworld is charismatic megafauna. People just love them.

This time of year, with all the bare-limbed trees in the park, he’s been pretty easy to spot.