In a story on par with the most bizarre plot line of a Stephen King novel, more than 1000 dead birds to drop from the sky on New Year's Eve, over Arkansas -- the city of Beebe is still investigating what caused the death of blackbirds that littered the ground on New Year's Eve, only half of an hour before the official turn of the new year to 2011.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission says enforcement officers began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve – right before the nation began officially ringing in the new year. Blackbirds began falling from the sky, over a one-mile area of the city. An aerial survey confirms that no other dead birds were found outside of that specific locale.
About 65 of the dead birds that dropped were scooped up and collected, sent for testing to Arkansas’ state Livestock and Poultry Commission lab and also the National Wildlife Health Center lab located in Madison, Wisconsin. Testing isn’t expected to reveal a lot about the bizarre turn of events – with a commission ornithologist stating that previous test results, related to any similar occurrence, "usually were inconclusive" when previously performed in the past.
The birds’ bodies showed signs of physical trauma – meaning the fallen flock could possibly have been affected by weather, including a possibility of being hit by lightning or high-altitude hail. But New Year’s itself hasn’t been ruled out as a cause of death: the agency is looking into the possibility that the New Year's Eve holiday, and fireworks shot off in the nearby are, could have startled the birds from roost -- causing over 1,000 blackbirds to die from sheer stress, and possibly cause the dead birds drop from the sky.