Forty and Twenty Blackbirds Fell from the Sky

I'm a big fan of google news. When I look over my page of headlines, I feel like God, checking in on the world, nodding, frowning, tsk-tsking, and sometimes laughing.

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The Birds

This weekend, there was a bounty of Stephen King worthy phenomena near Little Rock, Arkansas, all collected in one neat little google newsblock.

First, on Thursday night, December 30th, for those conspiracy theorists out there, about 100,000 fish were found floating dead in the Arkansas river. The idea of dead fish is creepy enough on its own, but then, just before midnight on New Year's Eve, a flock of 5,000 blackbirds fell from the sky near Beebe, Arkansas.

My first thought was that the birds ate the dead fish, and whatever killed the fish, killed the birds. Elementary, my dear Watson. But no, biologists said that the two events were unrelated, because you know, a whole mess of animals dying within 125 miles of each other happens all the time.

Really? Birds just fall out of the sky at the same time that fish are getting fried? How creepy would it be to walk outside and have it raining dead birds? When I was a kid, I saw The Birds. I still have nightmares, not sure what it is about birds that can be so lovely and so eerie all at the same time.

If I lived near Beebe, I'd be nervous. The news is reporting that workers in Hazmat suits walked around, collecting the dead animals, but told the residents "not to panic. Oh, right. If I lived there, I'd check the color of the water, the air quality levels, the terrorist alerts, and then I'd hunker down in my shelter with forty cans of Spam and wait another ten years until the planet had died out, and there were no more humans around.

Or maybe not.

Did you all hear about this one?