The Bronx Zoo has just released Flaco's necropsy results.
He was not thriving, as the people championing the ideal of "freedom" claimed.
He was poisoned.
He was sick.
He was suffering.
"Freedom" would have eventually killed him. A building just happened to do it first.
"Postmortem testing has been completed for Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl that was found down in the courtyard of a Manhattan building a little over a year after his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo was vandalized on February 2, 2023. Onlookers reported that Flaco had flown into a building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on February 23, 2024, and acute trauma was found at necropsy.
Bronx Zoo veterinary pathologists determined that in addition to the traumatic injuries, Flaco had two significant underlying conditions. He had a severe pigeon herpesvirus from eating feral pigeons that had become part of his diet, and exposure to four different anticoagulant rodenticides that are commonly used for rat control in New York City. These factors would have been debilitating and ultimately fatal, even without a traumatic injury, and may have predisposed him to flying into or falling from the building.
The identified herpesvirus can be carried by healthy pigeons but may cause fatal disease in birds of prey including owls infected by eating pigeons. This virus has been previously found in New York City pigeons and owls. In Flaco鈥檚 case, the viral infection caused severe tissue damage and inflammation in many organs, including the spleen, liver, gastrointestinal tract, bone marrow, and brain. 聽
No other contributing factors were identified through the extensive testing that was performed.
Flaco鈥檚 severe illness and death are ultimately attributed to a combination of factors鈥攊nfectious disease, toxin exposures, and traumatic injuries鈥攖hat underscore the hazards faced by wild birds, especially in an urban setting."
The naturalistic fallacy kills animals in horrible ways. The romanticism of what humans want to think of as a "free, wild, pure life" cannot be allowed supplant the reality of injury, sickness, and death. Releasing captive animals (or keeping them from being recaptured) because it's "better" for them to suffer untethered than live a healthy, safe, captive life is inhumane and horrific.
Flaco's life didn't have to end in pain, sickness, and suffering.
Flaco's death didn't have to be tragic.
But once the idea of "freedom" entered the chat, Flaco's fate was unavoidable.
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going to chb must be crazy like imagine sharing a camp with
-one of the strongest demigods ever who's saved the world like at least 3 times, fought multiple gods & titans and WON (and is a tartarus survivor)
-the literal main architect of OLYMPUS who's also saved the world multiple times (also tartarus survivor)
-THE lord of the wild who's also close friends with the first two (and has helped save the world multiple times)
-an emo kid from the 1930s who again helped save the world and is also a tartarus survivor (TWICE)
-a son of apollo who survived tartarus with nothing but cargo shorts and sheer will (pun intended)
-the main designer and builder for the argo II, also the first hephaestus kid to have fire powers since hundreds of years ago (did i mention killed gaea? no? yeah he did that too)
-a girl who somehow charmspeak-ed gaea into falling back asleep (also side note daughter of super famous actor because why not)
-pretty much everybody is a two-time war veteran
-THE GOD APOLLO who just sometimes comes down to visit in the form of a teenage boy
-did i mention dionysus, god of wine madness and theatre
-also chiron, trainer of pretty much every greek hero ever
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Oh
(This idea has been done before butttt I still wanna explore it)
What if instead of the JL believing that phantom is a ghost they just believe he is a very much overpowered meta with stereotypical ghost powers.
like in this AU, Phantom would have successfully gotten in contact the JL and got the GIW shot down, the JL thinking that the GIW were making false claims about a different species so they could experiment on metahumans with unique abilities. The Fentons works are under extreme watch and everything they do / want to research is heavily reviewed. Phantom ended up joining the Young Justice league.
So because JL assumed that Dannys 'ghost form' was just to keep his ID from being reveled, as no one would look for his real ideantity and if they did they would look at people who have died. Batman thought it was a genius strategy.
But then one of his teammates (im thinking either RR of Superboy) mentions that in all this time phantom hasn't aged a single bit
(I'm thinking that his ghost look never aged since he died, basically forever 14 in that form)
And Dannys brutally honest like "Of course I don't age im dead" while rolling his eyes.
And everyone stops and takes a full look at him really analyzing him.
And his teammate just has the loading screen on their heads and they just say: oh I thought that you that-
And they can't even complete a sentence cause their baffled.
And Dannys shrugs like it isn't a big deal: Yeah I've said this before, lab accident I died but came back. Anyways I have paperwork to do royal duties u know.
And he just leaves everyone to have a mental crisis over someone they knew died at such a young age and that they came back only to protect people.
Meanwhile Batman's over in the corner inputting 100s of questions into google
'Is it legal to adopt the ghost of a child'
'Can someone call cps on a families ghost'
'how to take care of ghosts 101'
'what do ghosts like'
'ghost customs'
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