The Auburn Eagle - Smarter Every Day 32

Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome to Smarter Every Day. So today we are getting ready for the Iron Bowl. We're at Jordan-Hare Stadium before anybody else is here, and we are going to practice with the Eagles. For every Auburn game, the eagle flies around and hits the field, and everybody screams, "War Eagle," which is pretty awesome, except that I'm an Alabama fan. But anyway, we're gonna partner together on this academic endeavor and see what we can learn. Welcome to Smarter Every Day.

[music]

Alright, so we are here on the field at Jordan-Hare Stadium with Marianne Hudson, and she is in charge of Spirit and Nova, and she's gonna show us what she does before the game and during the game.

"That's right, we practice with these birds almost every day here in the stadium, so a lot of folks don't realize that we spend a lot of time here in Jordan-Hare Stadium. So the birds are used to getting fed here. This is where they get their breakfast almost every morning. So on game day, we bring the birds out here. The only difference is, there are 87,000 people watching us, but for the birds, it's just routine."

(Destin) "OK, so for the Iron Bowl, this is the dinner plate?"

"That's right. What the bird knows is that every time he touches this lure, he gets fed. The other side again gives the date and the competitors, and so when the bird touches this lure, he gets some food."

(Destin) "So where do we put it? Do you put it out there and just drag it across?"

"That's right. What we do is the bird looks for us, and he knows that either myself or my partner Roy is gonna have this in our hands, and when he touches it, he gets the food reward. So he's looking for us, and he's waiting for us to produce this, and we usually try to drop it near the 50, 'cause that is our tradition."

[music]

OK, one question I've always had is what happens if the eagle just decides to leave the stadium? I mean, that could happen, right? They're animals; they get to make their own mind up.

"Well, the people here at Auburn University have thought about that. So what do you have here?"

"Every time we fly any of our birds free, whether it's the smallest owl or the largest eagle, we clip a telemetry unit to them. It's a tracking device. We have a receiver that reads the signal from the transmitter when it's turned on."

(Destin) "What's he got here?"

(Destin) "So that's it, huh?"

"And we have a seat for that transmitter permanently glued to the eagle's tail."

(Male) "There's the tail mount. Little clips in there. Secured, it's good to fly."

(Destin) "And can the bird even tell that it has the transmitter on?"

"Nope. It's very lightweight. He doesn't know it's there. It's out of the way in case he were to escape, and he wouldn't be tangled in anything."

(Destin) "It's actually in the slipstream too, so there's not a lot of drag in that position aerodynamically."

"That's right, so it just blends in with everything else, his general aerodynamic shape, and doesn't hinder him at all. So now you know how to track your pet eagle."

Alright, I'm here with Clay. We're in Jordan-Hare Stadium before the game. You can see they're painting the lines for the Iron Bowl. Check it out. They're not the only people that have to get ready for the Iron Bowl. Aah! The bird... The eagle slapped me.

I've been slapped several times by this eagle because I'm wearing crimson, and it doesn't like it. Roll Tide.

"War Eagle."

"Whatever. I think if you really asked me about it, legitimately, that the tiger is our mascot, but we have now obviously the golden eagle, which, you know, sends our team to victory; it's our rally cry."

(Destin) "I'm just gonna be honest with you, it makes no sense to me to carry an eagle around with a tiger on top of it. That doesn't make sense, man."

"It's aah, it worked all last season [laughs]. Bald eagle through the legs. We tried to investigate how to get an elephant to fly around our stadium before the games, but we couldn't get the jet engines... operation dumbo drop, yeah... we couldn't get Bear Bryant to figure it out for us."

"Did your eagle just slap me?"

"Yeah, you came to talk about Alabama... in his stadium. And you're wearing crimson."

[Captions by Andrew Jackson] Captioning in different languages welcome. Please contact Destin if you can help.