It was New Year’s Eve and citizens of Arkansas were reminiscing about 2010. Suddenly they heard several thuds on the roof. They looked outside to see blots of dead birds crashing from the sky.

The New Year’s event caused a debate on what exactly happened. It first occurred in Arkansas. Shortly afterwards, reports of avian deaths were recorded in the United States all the way to the eastern seaboard.

 Suggested explanations for this event have varied from the apocalypse to controversies of a weapon of mass destruction in the creation.

However the most convincing explanation leans towards the environment. Thousands of the same species birds died (Red wing-Blackbirds) while a thousand (drum fish) flooded the Arkansas River. This is significant because this is the first time in a while that a mass animal kill has happened near a civilian zone. Due to the rare occasion, the public felt a sense of fear, which fed to this uproar of the topic.

Environmental Science teacher, Mark Schaedel said, “The bird deaths are likely no cause for alarm. Groups of birds can die for a variety of reason, one theory is that they have been hit by planes or got caught in a storm. These cases are not that unusual. I think that the media coverage of these events has caused more people to take notice and report more sightings.”  

Whether it’s any of these reasons scientists are looking into this to decipher the true cause of this rare phenomenon.