If you're a conspiracy theorist, these are good times.   Leading up to the end of 2012, when the mother of all world endings is scheduled (until the next one), plenty of things would be expected to happen that sets it all in motion and counts as ominous portends, in that 'no-snowflake-in-an-avalanche-takes-the-blame' sort of way.

And one just did.   In Arkansas, thousands of blackbirds fell dead from the sky over the town of Beebe.




Birds were ancient omens.    An autopsy on a few showed they didn't die of starvation but rather blunt force.    What's large enough to knock thousands of birds out of the sky?  A big ol' alien spaceship?   Violent weather is the more likely answer.   A violent updraft that caught up sleeping birds and disoriented them likely have caused them to literally fly into the ground trying to escape it.   A wooded area in the town has been used a roost, home to several hundred thousand birds for years.

So, sorry, conspiracy folks, it seems that there is a good explanation.   Now if a bunch of fish had also died in Arkansas, that would be different.

Oh, wait...