ARE DEAD BLACKBIRDS AN OMEN OR JUST AN ODDITY?

If “four and twenty blackbirds” make a pie, Beebe, Arkansas, for the second New Year’s in a row, had enough dead blackbirds falling out of the sky to make more than 10 and perhaps as many as 20 fresh pies.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, per se, because I don’t think human beings, as a whole, can keep Big Secrets or, for that matter, small secrets either. Humans are blabbermouths. Yak, yak, yak. If you don’t believe me, just go to the mall and count all the people on their cell phones. Yak, yak, yak, bla, bla, bla. Is there really that much to talk about?

However, the puzzle in Beebe is more than a little interesting. Rise Earth, a conspiracy nut’s site for all things conspiratorial, reported that “5,000 blackbirds dropped dead from the sky last night in the early hours of the new year.” However, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette out of Little Rock said it was more like 250 birds and the Beebe News estimated between 200 and 400 dead birds.

Still, that’s a lot of blackbirds plopping out of the sky – and there are pictures of them scattered across streets and lawns.

Rise Earth tied it to the supposed Mayan prophesies about the end of days, and suggested that the blackbirds were the first harbinger of doom for 2012. (I’ll keep track of these harbingers as the year goes by and report on them in December.)

Admittedly, scientists are baffled, although some suggested the birds were scared to death by fireworks or freak weather or both. When the weekly Beebe News came out, it reported that malicious pranksters shot off fireworks in the bird’s roosting area and the blackbirds were so traumatized they flew blind, perhaps into a cloud system and were struck by lightning.

A link in the Arkansas Times took me to God Discussion, a site offering “News-Opinion-Reviews for Spiritual Seeks and Activists Who Cherish Freedom of Conscience.” There I learned that “some Christian leaders saw biblical prophecy in Hosea 4 (‘which describes Biblical animal deaths because of Israel's disobedience to God’) being fulfilled…” when the birds fell. Additionally, and sadly not surprisingly, another link took me to an article in which Cindy Jacobs, described as a Christian dominionist, "apostle" and "prophet," blames the dead birds on gays and lesbians, specifically “America is violating God's prohibition on homosexuality with support for gay marriage and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.”

What intrigues me as much as the mass feathered fatalities is the fact that the birds were flying at night. Dr. Kevin McGowan, a Cornell University ornithologist, pointed out that “Most of these birds don’t see any better at night than you or I do. They aren’t adapted to see at night like owls so if they went off from their perches at night they're blind at night just like you would be.”

I don’t believe Beebe’s dead blackbirds are a sign of the End of Days. However, I have a hard time buying the lightning strike hypothesis, too. Tis a mystery.