Word: bomber
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...show. The show, while accepting Hoddy's proposal, wanted a bald eagle-national bird and all that-instead of a golden. The one picked came from the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md., where it had lived for 22 years virtually without flying. Its name was Bomber, and according to Hoddy, "it looked like a little butterball turkey...
Hoddy put Bomber on a diet and set himself to winning the eagle's respect. At night the trainer would sleep in an easy chair, the bird on his arm. During the day, slowly, using meat as the incentive, he taught Bomber...
...take off from the western rim of the Coliseum, soar down the field during the playing of the national anthem, and land on a perch built in the form of one of the Olympic symbols, five interlocking rings. Bomber, warming to the mission, "had a couple of crash landings," the trainer says, but it was game...
...Then Bomber died - from stress, the word was, though the specific causes were vascular collapse and an acute bacterial infection. The bird had been fat, coddled for years, and when called upon to behave like an eagle, failed...
...thermal, eyed Hoddy, heard the music ("I'm gonna live forever!/ I'm gonna learn how to fly!"), dive-bombed the field and hit the perch without a hitch. There was applause all around. The eagle had landed. But a vigorous press got wind of Bomber's fatal stress, and the controversy that followed sadly resulted in Fluffs being pulled from the show...