The Eagle nickname and mascot for Boston College's teams were born through the eloquence of Rev. Edward McLaughlin. Fr. McLaughlin, incensed at a Boston newspaper cartoon depicting the champion BC track team as a cat licking clean a plate of its rivals, penned a passionate letter to the student newspaper, The Heights, in the newspaper's first year in 1920. "It is important that we adopt a mascot to preside at our pow-wows and triumphant feats," wrote Fr. McLaughlin. "And why not the Eagle, symbolic of majesty, power, and freedom? Its natural habitat is the high places. Surely the Heights is made to order for such a selection. Proud would the B.C. man feel to see the B.C. Eagle snatching the trophy of victory from old opponents, their tattered banner clutched in his talons as he flies aloft." And so it was. The eagle was adopted as mascot and nickname that same year. The national attention that followed brought gifts of two live mascots, from Texas and New Mexico, but neither bird found Chestnut Hill to its liking - one escaped and the other injured its beak trying.