Editorial
Front Page - Friday, January 14, 2011
Are we there yet?
Birds and snow
Jay Edwards
It’s the end of the world.” – Man in diner from the movie “The Birds.”
As Chevy Chase might have said to us on a Saturday evening back in the seventies – “Our top story tonight!” (And I can still see Garrett Morris screaming the headlines to the hearing impaired).
Well our top story a few nights back were those poor dead birds in White County, specifically Beebe. In something resembling the opening to a Jerry Brukheimer movie, thousands of birds, mostly Red-Wing Blackbirds, were found dead on the streets and lawns of the quiet town. “Bless their hearts,” as my mom would say.
They fell from the sky. The report was that the birds died of blunt force trauma.
Which gives their fireworks story credibility, they say, claiming that after the fireworks exploded the birds panicked and flew into houses, cars and each other.
I’m not buying it. I’ve heard birds hit houses and cars before and it’s not a quiet sound. So if thousands of them were crashing all around the people in Beebe on New Year’s Eve, don’t you think it would have awakened someone? But maybe the fireworks drowned the sound out.
There have been reports of other aviary calamities. In Kentucky, winter stress is being blamed for the deaths of 500 Brown-headed Cow Birds and there were 450 more that died in Louisiana; power lines the culprit there. Even in Sweden the news was bad, where 200 Jackdaws perished. I wonder if this is how the Ivory-billed Woodpecker met its demise.
Some non-scientist types are looking more to the supernatural for answers. Allison Warden with WeCanKnow.com believes in the widely publicized date of May 21, 2011 as the official Judgment Day for all mankind. WeCanKnow.com has billboards around the state warning citizens of the looming day. Warden has not given specifics but says that these “dying bird” occurrences should be expected.
Then there is Gerald Ryder, a self-proclaimed psychic from Pittsburg who was interviewed by KTHV. His theories are:
• A time travel device activated at the time of the bird deaths caused a tear in the “time travel continuum” resulting in shock and deaths for the birds.
• A spacecraft in the area hit the flock and crashed into the Arkansas River, explaining the dead fish found along the river’s banks.
• An early Indian tribe in Arkansas was entrusted with the care of the Arc of the Covenant centuries ago and placed it in Beebe where it resides today. Ryder says the Arc was awakened by “something of consciousness” that killed the birds to draw attention.
Ryder went on to say the dead birds found in Louisiana were caused by “karma” due to monkey experimentation. What monkey experimentation? Does this have anything to do with all those flying monkeys that worked for the Wicked Witch?
My friend Danielle posted an article from the European Union Times on Jan. 4 that may explain everything –
“A shocking report prepared for Prime Minister Putin by the Foreign Military Intelligence Directorate (GRU) states that one of the United States top experts in biological and chemical weapons was brutally murdered after he threatened to expose a US Military test of poison gas that killed hundreds of thousands of animals in Arkansas this past week.
“According to this report, John P. Wheeler III, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, Washington, D.C. from 2005-2008, was found brutally murdered and dumped in a landfill.” (You can read the entire article at www.eutimes.net)
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We made it home from Heber Springs Sunday morning in time to catch the sermon at church, cruise through Kroger and make it back home before the first flake fell. It was that big new Kroger out on Chenal, the one that sells diamond rings and loveseats; but all we bought was stuff to make vegetable soup and chocolate-chip cookies.
It’s nice when the weather folks get it right, especially when they promise us the rare white stuff. There have been countless times that we’ve waited for snow that never came. Maybe to add insult to injury it rains instead, and the next morning the school buses run on schedule. What a downer.
But not this time – this time Ned and Ed and even those guys on Channel Four who like to dress up, got it right. They said two to four inches and it was at least that much. Oh happy day!
I looked outside late Sunday and thought seriously about joining the neighborhood kids in their snowball fight, but changed my mind when I saw one of them was wearing a Longhorn sweatshirt. I just wasn’t in the mood to lose a snowball fight 15-14 to some kid, which is likely how it would have come out.
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