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The team may be named after a symbol for freedom, but the Philadelphia Eagles apparently don’t want fans practicing it.

Eagles security staff squashed a suburban fan’s freedom of speech at the gate before Sunday’s game, telling her she couldn’t enter the arena unless she covered up the anti-Michael Vick sentiments expressed on her T-shirt.

Kori Martin, 32, of Broomall, was wearing a shirt bearing the words “Losers fight pit bulls” on the front, with Vick’s name and No. 7 crossed out. On the back were the words “You don’t deserve a second chance,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

At the gate, she was told by security guards at Lincoln Financial Field that she could not wear the shirt because it was offensive to players and that the policy came from top management.

Martin was allowed into the stadium when she agreed to wear the shirt inside out — but she doesn’t consider the issue resolved.

“Not only has (Eagles owner) Jeffrey Lurie and the Eagles organization supported a dog murderer by signing this convict,” she said, “but now they want to take away my freedom of speech just because I don’t agree with them?”

Pamela Browner Crawley, the team’s senior vice president of public affairs, told the Inquirer she knew of no specific policy banning such shirts.

(Photo: T-shirt from Pitbullgear.com)

Sticky has a new home.

The cat that was duct-taped and dumped in a North Philly yard was adopted by a family Tuesday afternoon, according to Pennsylvania SPCA officials.

The family, which asked to remain anonymous, was selected out of nearly 100 animal lovers who had expressed interest in giving the gray cat a home.

PSPCA officers arrested James Davis Sunday for allegedly duct-taping the cat from its neck to its tail and dumping her in a North Philadelphia yard last week. He faces up to two years in prison on an animal cruelty charge.

The PSPCA received a tip identifying Davis as the culprit, then a few hours later got a call from Davis himself, admitting to the crime, NBC News in Philadelphia reported.

Davis reportedly lost both his father and a brother to murders in recent years.

Last week, the SPCA had offered a reward of $2,000 after the female cat was found wrapped in duct tape.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick spoke from behind the pulpit of a Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. yesterday — the latest in a series of talks aimed at helping to stop dogfighting and earning himself redemption.

With a line of police standing against the back wall, Michael Vick clutched the sides of a pulpit and told the crowd at the Covenant Baptist Church the story of how as a young child he watched dogfights in his Newport News, Va., neighborhood and eventually fell into a dogfighting operation, leading to his arrest, a 23-month prison term and more than two-year suspension from professional football.

You can read the Washington Post story here.

Vick was in D.C. as part of an arrangement he has made with Wayne Pacelle, the president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), to make two public appearances a month to speak out against dogfighting.

The agreement played a role in NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s decision to end Vick’s suspension last week, allowing him to play in the Eagles’ game last Sunday.

Vick has spoken at events held at schools in Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta.

In the aftermath of a 2004 tsunami on the coast of Kenya, a young hippo was found stranded on a reef, with no mother in sight.

Villagers worked together to rescue the 600-pound hippo, and transported him to Haller Park, an animal sanctuary about 50 miles away in Mombasa.

The hippo was placed in an enclosure with a tortoise named Mzee, who avoided him at first. But Owen was relentless in pursuing the tortoise’s friendship. Eventually the two bonded — despite the difference in age. Owen was one. Mzee was 130.

The pair went on to find fame on the Internet and in children’s books. But eventually, due to Owen’s increasing size, they had to be separated for Mzee’s safety. Their tale was recounted last week on the National Geographic Channel’s special, “Unlikely Animal Friends.”

Authorities in Pennsylvania are offering up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in dogfighting.

The reward was announced Monday in Philadelphia by Attorney General Tom Corbett and The Humane Society of the United States. About 40,000 people are believed to be involved in dogfighting across the country, Corbett said.

The reward also applies to cockfighting.

The Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA) says it has received more than 400 complaints about dogfighting in the first six months of this year –  up from 245 complaints during all of 2008.

The announcement came the morning after convicted dogfighter Michael Vick played in his first regular season game as a Philadelphia Eagle.

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The Oregon man who used a dog shock collar on his children was sentenced Monday to three years of supervised probation.

Under the sentence, Todd Marcum is not allowed to have contact with his four children without approval of the Department of Human Services and his parole officer.

Detectives said Marcum admitted to putting an electronic dog collar on his four children and shocking all of them at least once, acording to Fox 12 News in Salem.  At other times, police said, he would chase his 3-year-old son around with the collar, making him cry at the thought of being shocked by it.

The children – then ages 9, 8, 6 and 3 — have been in their mother’s custody since Marcum’s arrest.

Marcum told the court at his sentencing Monday that he is receiving counseling.

“If anybody knows me, they know my wife and my kids are my whole world,” Marcum said. “There’s no way I can make any excuse for what I’ve done. It will take me the rest of my life to make up for this to my family. Nothing like this will ever happen again.”

We’ve shared the story of Christian the lion with you before, but it’s one of those of which you can’t get too much.

One of the segments featured on “Unlikely Animal Friends,” a National Geographic Channel special that aired last week, focused on the relationship between Christian and the humans that he was happy — ecstatic, even — to see again a year after they returned him to the wild.

A municipal judge in Aspen has ordered a Pomeranian named Gizmo to get out of town.

Judge Brooke Peterson last week told Gizmo’s owner to find the dog a new home — outside of Aspen — adding that, if Gizmo, who has a history of biting people, returns, he will be euthanized.

“As a judge, the hardest decision I ever have to make is to take someone’s pet away or euthanize it,” Peterson told Melinda Goldrich, Gizmo’s owner. “But you and I have been dealing with your dog since 2006 … and your excuses have worn out my patience.”

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When Kathy Wilkes-Myers of Love Me Tender Animal Rescue found a Rottweiler on the side of a highway in Tennessee, she immediately got the feeling the dog belonged to somebody — she wasn’t as timid and untrusting as most abandoned dogs.

“I could just tell right away she was somebody’s baby. She just didn’t act like a stray dog to me,” said Wilkes-Myers, who found the dog a few months ago, emaciated and drinking from a drainage ditch along the road.

Wilkes-Myers suspected there was more to the dog’s story, and began doing some detective work.

She returned to where she found the dog, and found the first clues - broken glass and tail lights. Not far away she found a pile of personal items — a toothbrush, comb, razor, and a candle with “Michelle” written on it — that had been gathered, apparently by the dog.

“It was like she was sleeping with them – or waiting with them,” Wilkes-Myers told Steve Hartman of CBS News.

It was then she remembered driving by a bad accident on the same stretch of highway, two weeks earlier.  A car had flipped over and landed on the side of the road, crunched up so badly she was sure there were no survivors.

But it led her to wonder — might the dog have been in the car?

When the highway patrol told her the names of the victims — including a mother named Michelle, the pieces came together.

Ella apparently spent  13 days scavenging for food along the highway – and 13 nights bedding down with whatever she could find that smelled like her lost family, Hartman reported.

Wilkes-Myers also found out that all five members of the family survived the crash. After two weeks believing that their dog, Ella, had died, the Kellys got the good news and were reunited with their dog.

Because of their medical expenses, the Kelly family has had to relocate to temporary housing that doesn’t allow dogs, but Wilkes-Myers has promised to keep Ella for as long as they need.