Scary, I'd be freaking out and leaving the area, it's clear a Zombie outbreak is imminent.

Albert Hitchcock?

Ask Alfred Einstein, I'll bet he knows what happened.

My mama was born in Beebe Ark in 1928, on a cotton growing dirt farm. She had better grammar...

Nature, you crazy!

They're not dead, they're restin'!

A weird thing like this happened in Idaho. Nobody reported on this, but as a school bus driver i noticed while traveling the interstate to and from Boise, that at(almost exactly) every 10 miles there was a barn owl dead on the side of the road. You could almost predict them with your odometer like clockwork. Lots of theories abounded but the one that made the most sense to me was that they were attracted to the glare off the vehicles windows and crashed into them. I'm still a bit bothered by the fact it was never reported or mentioned by anyone. I kid you not but I passed a white barn owl on the side of the road every 5 miles for the 300 mile trip to Boise. Crazy

It was fireworks! http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/03/3105511.htm?section=justin

throw this on top
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/02/arkansas.fish.kill/index.html
article is from jan 2nd

fireworks also?

It's Y2K.. 11!

Gas? Radiation?

I'd guess pesticides, sprayed from a crop duster. The plane may have flown over where the birds were roosting. Then later the pesticides could have washed into the river, killing the fish mentioned in Deathcow's linked article.

>> ^heathen:

I'd guess pesticides, sprayed from a crop duster. The plane may have flown over where the birds were roosting. Then later the pesticides could have washed into the river, killing the fish mentioned in Deathcow's linked article.


Except as was pointed out, pollutants would have affected multiple fish species instead of only one. Also, I'd guess that it would be quite unlikely for pesticides sprayed in the air to travel 125 miles without dispersing to really low concentrations unless the initial concentration/quantity was ridiculously high. Plus, even if some chemical in the air reached the ground in a concentrated amount, it's also highly unlikely that, specific crazy topography aside, the local watershed could move the chemical 125 miles in the time span in question.

Until more info, I'd stick with the "unrelated" hypothesis.

I suspect fowl play.

>> ^mgittle:

>> ^heathen:
I'd guess pesticides, sprayed from a crop duster. The plane may have flown over where the birds were roosting. Then later the pesticides could have washed into the river, killing the fish mentioned in Deathcow's linked article.

Except as was pointed out, pollutants would have affected multiple fish species instead of only one. Also, I'd guess that it would be quite unlikely for pesticides sprayed in the air to travel 125 miles without dispersing to really low concentrations unless the initial concentration/quantity was ridiculously high. Plus, even if some chemical in the air reached the ground in a concentrated amount, it's also highly unlikely that, specific crazy topography aside, the local watershed could move the chemical 125 miles in the time span in question.
Until more info, I'd stick with the "unrelated" hypothesis.


Yeah, I was suggesting the fish were poisoned in the river near the spraying site and then swam to Ozark before dying, not that the pesticides were carried on the wind for 125 miles.

I also agree the watershed couldn't move the pollutants that far, especially since Google tells me the Arkasas river flows in the wrong direction.

Pollutants are certainly likely to affect multiple fish species, however they don't have to affect them all the same way, or with the same severity. For example, maybe fish larger than the drum didn't receive a large enough dose to kill them, or smaller fish were able to survive as they required less oxygen in the water.

As you say, it may just be an unrelated co-incidence. However, with that many animals dying in such a short time frame, I'd personally hope it was a one-off mistake than something that could occur twice in such a small area, within a day of each other.

What was your flash forward?

I suspect it's the apocalypse, but due to unforeseen budgetary issues it will be confined to Arkansas.

>> ^deathcow:

I suspect it's the apocalypse, but due to unforeseen budgetary issues it will be confined to Arkansas.


You sir, just made my day.

Nice camo Mayor.

NY Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/us/04beebe.html

mentions another 500 dead birds, more varied in species, found outside a town in Louisiana.

I was waiting for the city official to say 'It couldn't possibly be the massive plastic factory.. pan camera.. that is pumping out thousands of tuns of toxic gas into the sky and giving every other person in this town a baseball size tumor in their necks. Couldn't possibly be that!"

Ah well..


IMHO if it were fireworks this would happen every year.. and everywhere. I'm pretty sure every bird in the country knows innately to hide on July 4th and December 31st. I'm sure it'll be some chemical or pesticide or factory dumping toxic shit into the river, etc.

@heathen I see what you're saying...the two being related still seems far-fetched. Something that kills birds mid-air and fish 125 miles away...not saying it's impossible that they're related, just that it probably isn't something as obvious as a pollutant.

Besides, NPR had a segment on All Things Considered last evening that said the birds they collected to study all had internal bleeding from what they thought was blunt force trauma and that they didn't expect to find any traces of pollutants.

Fireworks!!! Classic.
Chalk another one up to Monsanto methinks.

http://videosift.com/video/WL-US-bullies-Europe-on-behalf-of-Monsanto

http://videosift.com/video/A-round-up-on-Monsanto

http://videosift.com/video/The-World-According-to-Monsanto-Documentary-Trailer

http://videosift.com/video/The-Geneteic-Conspiracy-Are-GMO-Foods-Safe

http://videosift.com/video/Monsanto-s-On-going-Quest-For-Food-Domination

*dark

Adding video to channels (Dark) - requested by kasinator.

*horrorshow

Adding video to channels (Horrorshow) - requested by kasinator.

Stupid fucking kid naming the bird wrong! Shoulda named it JESUS!!!!

>> ^Fusionaut:

It was fireworks! http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/03/3105511.htm?section=just
in


I'm guessing the fish are a coincidence due to the distance involved (they weren't next to each other; so to speak...).

Although, fireworks (or things like that) due make some sense. I wonder if there were any "town" shows as I saw mention of only revelers for fireworks (which seems highly unlikely to cause something like this; unless these birds have a form of mass hysteria, like humans).

The lightning sounded like a better idea, but they should be able to match it to the autopsies. It'll be better once they have a few thorough autopsies done and a good idea of "where" they died (altitude, in the general area or a slight wind carry). Maybe, even a sonic boom could be at play. A plane might be able to make one loud enough, but if it happened at 30k like proposed I'm unclear whether residents would even hear a sonic boom. Also, I'm unsure as to the strength of a thunderclap (as it's also a "sonic boom", to some degree--far different cause than speed, as in lightning's case it's temperature variants), can the thunder cause a "fish in a barrel type effect, especially if the birds were in a storm with rain or a "heavy" cloud structure.

Maybe they were stunned and the fall actually killed them. Hopefully, we find out quick. I always fine these large die-offs interesting as sometimes the causes can give us more insight into how our planet works. One (actually two, in the same place) that I can think of off the top of my head was a Human die-off.

It was from Lake Nyos, in northwest Cameroon. Lake Nyos is one of three "exploding lakes" here are two interesting articles about them, but there is a (it's a National Geographic show, I'm very unsure of the title, it's related to the BBC show, "Killer Lakes", I just put up here; at the bottom is the link for it), but I know Lake Nyos is included in it) show about it which is a must watch -- they figured out what was happening basically on accident as well (this was not even a theory before; now they're afraid there are "mega-pockets" which is talked about in a History Channel "Mega Disasters" episode (I think "Methane Explosion", though "Methane" is used for sure) -- if something happens at an "ocean geographic scale" it would kill a lot of people; it has the potential to be worse than Yellowstone, but we have absolutely no information on the likelihood of this occurring nor the size of such an event). Nyos killed roughly 3500 livestock and 1700 people, some of the villagers were 16 miles from the lake. One of the other lakes is in Cameroon and the other is in Rwanda.

Here are the Wikipedia links:

Limnic Eruptions or also known as Exploding Lakes -- think of them as being somewhat like a soda can with the lid popped off and some Mentos thrown in.

Second, Lake Nyos which killed a large amount of people in 1986 and left scientists baffled.

There are some media links at the bottom of the wiki articles.


Here is the BBC documentary I just put up for the sift (HORiZONS, BBC World); trust me it's an interesting watch. Make sure you have time to watch it as it comes in at a FULL episode and is 44 minutes long. This documentary talks about the 1986 disaster and the mystery surrounding it.

They'll get into the mechanics and also show the reason some scientists are scared this WILL happen again, but this time it might kill hundreds of thousands--maybe more...