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Mysterious bird deaths in Austin
Jan. 8th, 2007 12:07 pmhttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4454558.html
Police shut down 10 blocks of businesses in the heart of downtown early Monday after dozens of birds were found dead in the streets, but officials said preliminary tests showed no dangerous chemicals in the air.
As many as 60 dead pigeons, sparrows and grackles were found overnight along Congress Avenue, a main route through downtown. No human injuries or illnesses were reported.
The reaction to this event is interesting to me. "Canary in a coal mine" seems to be the implicit message of closing the downtown area to human business. An airborne chemical strikes me as pretty unlikely, as these three bird species aren't going to be clustered together where a concentration of gas would kill them all--what are we imagining here? A dense cloud of poison gas hovering over the city? Have they detained the Joker?
I do love an urban nature mystery, and I hope they figure this one out in a hurry. Hopefully some brainiac has made the step of ordering necropsies of the birds to see what killed them. My prediction is that they will find that the birds were deliberately poisoned.
Police shut down 10 blocks of businesses in the heart of downtown early Monday after dozens of birds were found dead in the streets, but officials said preliminary tests showed no dangerous chemicals in the air.
As many as 60 dead pigeons, sparrows and grackles were found overnight along Congress Avenue, a main route through downtown. No human injuries or illnesses were reported.
The reaction to this event is interesting to me. "Canary in a coal mine" seems to be the implicit message of closing the downtown area to human business. An airborne chemical strikes me as pretty unlikely, as these three bird species aren't going to be clustered together where a concentration of gas would kill them all--what are we imagining here? A dense cloud of poison gas hovering over the city? Have they detained the Joker?
I do love an urban nature mystery, and I hope they figure this one out in a hurry. Hopefully some brainiac has made the step of ordering necropsies of the birds to see what killed them. My prediction is that they will find that the birds were deliberately poisoned.
