The Flamingo Love Story Traditional Cache

On June 27, 2005, a ten-year-old flamingo escaped the confines of its Wichita zoo with another pale-pink inmate. Zookeepers hadn’t properly clipped either flamingo’s wings—a regrettable error, they later confessed—and the birds simply took flight when no one was watching. The fugitives, members of an “old world” species called the greater flamingo, had recently arrived in Kansas from a colony in Tanzania. They hadn’t even been named yet and were only identified by the numbered tags on their right legs; their sex was also undetermined. Despite this lack of human knowledge, the flamingo known only as 492 would soon join a long list of headline-making runaway animal celebrities, thanks to its bold escape.

The shores of Texas and Louisiana are a bird-watching Mecca, stocked with a carousel of species that visit that water in a yearly rotation. Dozens of breeds of gull, willet, coot, heron, and crane all take their turns in the Gulf, and when occasional rogue birds—called vagrants—arrive in the water, they send birders scrambling for their cameras. Such was the case a decade ago when Internet groups began buzzing about the two spots of pink light that a few birders had seen in the surf. When the birders found boats to take them closer to the pink spots, those spots became bodies: an anomalous and bonded interspecies pair of flamingos, neither of which should be anywhere near Louisiana’s salty shores.

“It was so funny,” McGowan says. “They did everything in unison: standing in unison, stepping in unison. They even flew in unison.” His photos from the day include a gorgeous shot of what looks like a hot-pink bird (HDNT) with a pale-pink shadow (492). Their matching forms rise up from the water in a baffling synchronicity. As they launch, their legs retract into their bodies, bending at the knees in twin acute angles.

Sadly, McGowan’s sighting of the pair together was one of the last. In 2015, a Facebook page for birders announced a 492 sighting in Refugio County, but HDNT was nowhere to be found. Subsequent spottings were of 492 only, and now birders have little hope for the fate of its rare compatriot. Given the monogamous tendencies of flamingos, the bond between the two was one from which neither would voluntarily escape.

Whether they were lovers, buddies, or partners in crime, 492 and HDNT flew side by side for nearly a decade. When they bent their heads together and touched beaks, their necks made the shape of a heart. And that looks like love, no matter if its between best friends, family, or lovebirds. Real love boils down to keeping close in the time you’ve got.