Just curious, if the eagle's name is tiger. Then is the tiger's name eagle? What's with the dead birds? That sucks, I like animals. What did they die from?
Come on now. You didn't think you could post THAT pic on this site and no one would give you a little sh*t? Now, answer the bird question!!!
The raptor center had 8 of their 12 birds die of Mycoplasma gallisepticum (naturally occurring pathogen, whatever that is) and we won't have the "Tiger" pregame flights this year. "Tiger", our 25 year old Golden Eagle who flew at the opening ceremonies at the Olympics and the Bald Eagle, "Spirit", that we had last year are still alive though. Our trustees say that they will be back though. Did any of you guys get to see it? It really is exciting... Here's the article if you wanted to read about it... http://www.al.com/auburnfootball/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/sports/105981600536490.xml
If they still have 4 birds why did they cancel pre-game flights for the whole year? Was the flight duty split between just a couple of birds and the others were not trained? I haven't seen auburn's tiger in flight. I have seen a bald eagle do the same thing circling the crowd before though. It was pretty cool.
The staff that headed that up was fired for reasons I don't know. Sticky situation I guess. "Tiger" is too old to fly. Early last season, I forget which game it was, but when she took off and made a couple of rounds she landed behind the Auburn bench, obviously the wrong landing spot. After that they said she was too old to do it anymore and that even if she were perfectly healthy, she could croak anyday simply because of her age. "Spirit", the Bald Eagle, came in after "Tiger" and did really well but it got sick and they said it just wouldn't be ready in time for USC anyway. I don't know anything about the other birds...but they say they'll be back for 2004, so when you guys come back up, we should have some more "War Chickens" flying around for you. Check this out...right click the link and "Save As..." to your desktop. It's an avi of one of "Tiger's" flights that was on ESPN. http://www.aunation.net/MediaVid&Aud/tiger.avi