Posted on 01/02/2011 2:40:21 PM PST by TaraP
CNN) -- Arkansas game officials hope testing scheduled to begin Monday will solve the mystery of why up to 5,000 blackbirds fell from the sky just before midnight New Year's Eve.
The birds -- most of which were dead -- were found within a one-mile area of Beebe, about 40 miles northeast of Little Rock, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said. The blackbirds fell over about a one-mile area, the commission said in a statement.
As of Saturday, between 4,000 and 5,000 blackbirds had been found dead, said Keith Stephens with the commission.
"Shortly after I arrived, there were still birds falling from the sky," said commission wildlife officer Robby King in the statement. He said he collected about 65 dead birds
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Are those the replacement birds? LOL!
Grackles, right?
This happens from time to time around here.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16524779/ns/us_news-life/
We had a big hailstorm a couple of years ago that wiped out a bunch of Grackles. Apparently not very smart bird.
Avian flu occurs to me. I remember in 2002, most of the birds I saw were on the ground, feet up.
HAARP
4 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie....
4 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie....
Try the veal!
Many years ago, in the sixties IIRC a waste treatment pond that processed toxic chemicals from a textile plant somehow drained into the Great Pee Dee river at Cheraw, South Carolina. It killed every fish in the river. I went to see it and it was hideous, huge catfish, carp etc. floating toward the ocean.
Ahhh, the great Pee Dee.
A curious name of a river on the way going south.
Hey, we have ours too. I fish on the Great Swatara Creek that goes into the Susquihanna next to Three Mile Island. Fish were half cooked until they made the release water temperature the same.
Yeah, well, you know. If that’s the worst thing you ever do, you’ll never be a member of the Obama Czar squad. ;)
Happy New Year, GG.
So.... how did you adjust your recipe for that?
Dang, now I’m gonna have that song bouncing around in my head all night, LOL
FR’s second name now is The Comedy Club.
“Got sucked up in a tornado updraft. Ran out of oxygen at 60,000 ft. Passed out. Killed by fall.”
The tornado was in north west Arkansas, quite a ways a way. Beebe is more in the central part of the state. There were t-storms in the area on Friday, but they were gone by mid afternoon.
A biologist I heard on the news today suspected it was a lightning strike. It's a pretty reasonable explanation, and a whole lot more reasonable than jumping all the way to a nerve gas release.
So... lightning hit 5000 birds at once?
Maybe I just read too much Charles Fort, but this sounds suspiciously like the “fireworks” theory. “Well, fireworks scared the birds!” — like on one on Earth ever sets off fireworks, and somehow just THESE “fireworks” decided to be deadly. Similarly, lightning happens all the time without mountains of birds dropping dead from it. I’m not saying it’s not possible - I’m not a scientist... but I do suspect the media promotes “well, this sounds good...” kind of explanations when things like this happen, just to get people to say to themselves: “Oh, well THAT’S why it happened then...” without thinking much about it... then move on.
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