If you thought 100,000 dead fish littering the banks of the Arkansas River was bad, the folks in remote Beebe, Arkansas, are wrestling with an even weirder animal problem. On New Year’s Eve, Beebe was the epicenter of an unusual rainstorm. Water wasn’t falling from the sky, dead birds were. An estimated 1000 dead blackbirds fell from the skies over Beebe, Arkansas, and officials are still struggling to find an explanation.
“The flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail,” said Arkansas Game and Fish Commission ornithologist Karen Rowe, speculating on the cause of the dead animals. In previous mass bird death incidents, testing was conducted but results “usually were inconclusive.”
Until then, all Beebe can do is clean up. The city has contracted an outside service to assist in the clean-up and removal of the pesky bird bodies. Wildlife officer Robby King collected about 65 of the dead birds, which will be sent to the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission lab and Madison, Wisconsin’s National Wildlife Health Center.
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