Splash Cartoon Reflects Birds' New Commitment To Animal Rights

I thoroughly enjoyed this week's PE.com splash cartoon not only because it highlighted the nationally underappreciated Trent Cole (be sure to put him on your Pro Bowl ballot here), but also because it demonstrated the Eagles' renewed commitment to animal rights. 

The cartoon features hunting enthusiast "Wilderness" Trent Cole (owner and proprietor of Cole Outdoors -- look out monster whitetails!) clashing with a cartoon Bear ahead of Sunday night's game.  But instead of hunting and murdering said bear (in the most humane way possible, of course), we get the politically correct version of this clash.  

For example, while the real Trent Cole might have gone after the Bear with a high-powered hunting bow, the cartoon Trent Cole wrassles said bear and puts him in a headlock:

And instead of dragging the Bear's dead corpse to his home and mounting it on his wall, the cartoon Trent Cole simply makes the Bear stand quietly in the corner in some sort of ursine Time Out:

Pretty sensitive, right? 

Well, it turns out that this wasn't the original version of the cartoon, and that there was some significant editorial pushback from the Birds' community affairs department.  Apparently the first cut of the cartoon was a little more realistic, and there were concerns that the realism might have angered the very stakeholders that the Eagles had worked so hard to court in the wake of the Michael Vick signing. 

Luckily, your intrepid IgglesBlog staffers were able to uncover a rare copy of the first cut of the video, and it was, ahem, a bit more true to life.

Personally, I applaud this renewed commitment to animal rights. Go Birds.

(Yes yes, you're all impressed by my mad low-end image-editing skillz.  Especially the bit with the "arrow."  Subtle, I know.)