At the Auburn football game against Mississippi State Saturday, the flight of bald eagle Spirit took a turn for the worse.

On his descent from the flagpole to the field, Spirit flew into the plastic glass outside a skybox.

“He just slammed right into it,” said Crystal Whitaker, who was inside the skybox with her three children. “It was hard—it wasn’t grazing by. It sounded like a truck hitting a wall.”

Spirit’s trainers do not know what caused the change in his route, said Jamie Bellah, professor of small animal surgery and director of the Southeastern Raptor Center.

Although he was purely speculating, Bellah said it is possible that Spirit saw his own reflection in the glass and became confused.

“We didn’t expect him to turn into the window, but we don’t know why he did,” said raptor specialist Marianne Hudson. “Flights are unpredictable each time.”

Hudson was on the field during Spirit’s flight.

“I could tell by the way he was flying that he wasn’t hurt, so I was glad of that,” she said. “I was definitely wanting to get him down on the field so that we could take a closer look at him.”

Spirit shows no signs of injury and has been eating and behaving normally, Bellah said.

“We’re just lucky,” Bellah said. “Despite all our training, he is on his own when he’s up in the air.”

Whitaker said the reaction inside the skybox was one of surprise, and even her 4-year-old son, Grady, did not scream.

“He’s been telling everybody the eagle was coming to eat his baby brother,” Whitaker said. “That’s what he thought.”

When the eagle is released before kickoff, it flies toward its trainer, who is on the field swinging a lure with a food reward.

The eagles and trainers generally practice this routine Monday through Friday before a home game, Bellah said.

“It’s rare, but on some practice days they have flown out of the stadium,” he said. “It’s happened very infrequently.”

If an eagle does leave the stadium, a telemetry unit on its tail allows it to be tracked for about four days or within a 50-mile radius.

Bellah said either Spirit or Nova will fly in the next home game Sept. 24 against Florida Atlantic, and training for the eagles will continue as usual.

“A lot of people have called in expressing their concerns,” Bellah said. “We’ve really appreciated the concerns of the Auburn family.”