Precious, wild life

A few animal stories in today's roundup, plus a sweet tribute to Flaco the owl.

Welcome to Quality Sheet, a weekly assortment of outside-the-box news, events, trends and offbeat oddities to indulge your curiosity. Subscribe for a midweek treat each Wednesday that'll make you hummm with intrigue and amusement.

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Quality Sheet is six months old today! If it were a kitten, it would be playful, mischievous and have a taste for human flesh. But, because it isn’t, I’ll try to keep it to the first two adjectives.

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Let’s dive in.

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The untimely death of Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl over the weekend united animal lovers, New Yorkers and freedom chasers around the world. After escaping his Central Park zoo enclosure in February last year, he soared free around Manhattan before a tragic collision killed him. Ecologist Carl Safina writes a beautiful tribute in the New York Times: “In life, Flaco’s single year of freedom proved vastly more thrilling and resonant to us than his anonymous years of cage-bound safety, proving that freedom is worth the cost, even when it comes bundled with danger.” Related: The title of today’s newsletter is inspired by this Mary Oliver poem, the spirit of which I think is also a fitting tribute to Flaco.

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What’s your idea of paradise? If it involves cats, well: welcome to heaven on Earth. Shanghai’s ‘Cat Island’ forms part of a pet sanctuary that opened in the Chinese city after its stringent Covid lockdown, the Washington Post’s Lisa Movius and Yufan Lu report. 

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U.K. researchers recently recovered a 1,700-year-old egg that never hatched from a wishing well at an ancient Roman settlement near Oxford. Astonishingly, the egg is still full of liquid—an unusual outcome thanks to the egg being accidentally preserved by conditions in the well. Researchers are hoping to study the liquid inside, “but it's highly suspected to come from a breed of chicken,” Atlas Obscura’s Colleen Kelly writes.

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A few years ago, I suffered a short bout of knee pain because of my commitment to pointy-toed, high-heeled ankle boots. Nevertheless, she persisted. I refuse to give them up, but I swap them out every now and then for a Sensible Walking Shoe. Anyway, science makes the case for the psychological boost that comes from wearing stilettos.

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Fancy a front-row seat to the next once-in-a-generation total eclipse in the U.S.? Delta airlines is flying a special route on April 8 that will pass through the “Great American Eclipse’s” path of totality. Find out more here.

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We may keen to discover life beyond our planet, but there are entire worlds on Earth that are in some ways more complex than how human societies operate. Journalist John Whitfield explores the geopolitics of the red fire ant and the species’ global expansion over the past 150 years. “There is a science-fiction epic going on under our feet, an alien geopolitics being negotiated by the 20 quadrillion ants living on Earth today.”

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The “Chizza” (imagine a pizza and a piece of fried chicken have a baby) is making its way around the world. Now, it’s hatched in the U.S. KFC is bringing the dish to Manhattan and beyond, where it will be available until the end of March.

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Thank you for reading. Share to sweeten someone’s day—and have a lovely rest of your week!

Isabel :)

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