The Eagle Has Landed — And Oh My, What a Mess!

At Stuart Newman Associates public relations agency, we primarily represented travel, tourism and cruise clients. In 1992, I relocated from North Carolina to Miami and transitioned from cruise editor reporting on cruise lines for ASTA Agency Management magazine to senior accounts manager repping cruise lines at NewmanPR.

At that time, the industry was still in its relatively early stages, even though the first leisure cruises were sold in the 1960s and had become increasingly popular through the ’70s and ’80s. But in the 1990s, the cruise lines were on a shipbuilding spree. One of my last trips as cruise editor for the magazine was a press trip aboard Carnival Chairman Micky Arison’s 727 airliner, a remnant of the failed Carnival Airlines, to Kvearna Masa Yards in Helsinki, Finland, to inspect three Holland America Line ships under construction followed by a flight to Fincantieri Yards in Monfalcone, Italy, to see two Carnival ships being built.

By the late 1990s the agency was intimately involved in new-ship introductions, writing and distributing press materials, handling the planning and logistics around christening events and occasionally doing other promotional activities related to the brands we represented: Carnival Cruise Line and Holland America Line.

Holland America had taken delivery of the 1,440-passenger Volendam Oct. 25, 1999, and the ship was slated to be christened and depart on its inaugural voyage from Fort Lauderdale 18 days later on Nov. 12.

One of Holland America’s favorite charities was the Alaska Raptor Center in Sitka, Alaska, where injured birds of prey were rehabilitated and, when possible, released back into the wild. For the Volendam intro, Buddy the Eagle was brought from Alaska to Fort Lauderdale and had his own cabin onboard the ship.

The agency founder, Stuart Newman, was a master of generating local media attention through his extensive network of contacts. One of them was Bob Weaver, a legendary local TV personality who was the nation’s first full-time “weatherman” and for more than half a century did the morning show at NBC affiliate WTVJ in Miami.

Besides introducing early versions of many of the visual elements that have become standard in television weather reports, Weaver was an accomplished ventriloquist who enlivened his show by interacting with “Weavie,” a colorful bird that became a beloved recurring character on WTVJ’s morning show.

Stuart recognized an opportunity to generate some buzz for Holland America by proposing that Weaver “interview” Buddy the Eagle live on his show, since he was already adept at interacting with a bird, albeit a stuffed one. Weaver loved the idea, so on a cool November morning at 4:30 a.m. Stuart and I headed north to Fort Lauderdale and collected Buddy and his female handler from the ship and then headed south to the downtown studios of WTVJ. Buddy, his handler and a driver followed in a van.

Upon arrival, Buddy was de-hooded and set on a 4-foot-tall perch next to Bob Weaver’s news desk. Now your average adult bald eagle weights about 9 pounds, is 2-feet, 7 inches long, with a wingspan over 7 feet. So Buddy was an impressive specimen on the monitor, and we were looking forward to a successful “interview.”

And that was when disaster struck — Buddy unleashed an unholy dump right there on the stage, and a 9-pound bird can apparently hold (or not, in this case) about a quart of eagle poop, which is the color and consistency of half & half creamer. Forcefully expelled from a height of 4 feet, the scat made an impressive splash.

I was immediately reminded of W.C. Fields’ famous quote: “Never work with children or animals.”

While Stuart, the handler and I were absolutely mortified, Weaver thought it was hilarious, and we all joined in with handfuls of paper towels to clean up the mess. Every time Weaver bent over to wipe up eagle crap, his hairpiece, which was affixed to the top of his forehead, flopped forward into his eyes and he would nonchalantly push it back and pat it into place.

When the mess was behind us and we were counting down to live, Weaver addressed Buddy directly: “Buddy, I have had a lot of guests on my show who were full of crap, but you take the cake!”