Henny Penny? Are you out there?

Remember the tale of Chicken Little and Henny Penny?

An acorn fell on Chicken Little's head and she thought the sky was falling. She then did her version of the ride of Paul Revere, running through the barnyard screeching, "The sky is falling!!"

Gotta wonder how many folks thought this same thing the other day when, literally, thousands of red winged black birds fell from the sky in Arkansas at about the same moment. In fact, how many are still wondering. Shortly after that event, it was discovered another several hundred (again, red winged black birds) fell to the ground in Louisiana, too. Oh yeah, did you hear about the flock that dropped from the sky in Kentucky? Or those that also came down in Sweden?

Maybe we watched too many episodes of the Twilight Zone in last week's marathon but this is giving me an eerie feeling and the sounds of "do do, do do, do do..." keep running through my head. Okay, I've also been reading a few strange novels ranging from far-out conspiracy tales to real science fiction (I've got to get back to those culinary mystery novels - you know, the murder mystery lite genre.)

Seriously, I haven't really heard a plausible explanation yet. The preliminary autopsy results show they died of "multiple blunt force trauma to their vital organs." They (the voices of authority) have posted theories of hail, lightning and even fireworks but we're talking 5000 birds here, folks. Don't you think people in the community would have noticed such a hail or lightning event? And just how big a fireworks display does a little town like that put on?

Another baffling question is how did whatever this event was only pick on red winged blackbirds and no other species? I won't buy that this town only has one kind of bird flying around. I'm also confused as to why this many birds were flying around in the dark? In my experience, most would be roosting for the night. Anything disturbing that large a flock of roosting birds would most likely leave some sort of tree destruction behind.

I don't even want to consider the sudden fish kill involving hundreds of drum fish (again, an isolated breed) in a nearby river in the same time period.

I guess both events will go down as the first great mystery of 2011.

I'm not generally an alarmist but I really have to wonder what weird scientific experiments are being conducted out there and by whom?

Well, I'm off to re-watch the dvds of the first few seasons of Lost. It's no stranger than the nightly news these days!