It's raining men! (And birds. And some rain.)

It has been raining a weird amount of shit lately. Actual rain has seen water cover (using this word literally) an area the size of France AND Germany, but in Australia.  Snow is still falling (so sweetly) on much of northern England, and in Beebe, Arkansas, a blackbird storm hit town.

http://www.ignitionnews.com.au/2011/01/thousands-of-blackbirds-fall-from-sky-in-beebe
(Ignore the use of THOUSANDS in the headline, which is subsequently downgraded to hundreds in the bulk of the article. I’ve already sent this to media watch).


On New Years Eve ‘thousands’ of blackbirds fell from the sky in Beebe, in a terrifying night of fireworks of the worst possible kind. This raining birds thing is something I hope to never experience, having an extreme fear of birds (yes, from taking film studies), plus not feeling I really have the right kind of umbrella for such a day. We might have to prepare though, because this PT Anderson* moment doesn’t seem to be an isolated phenomenon. Avian raindrops have recently been seen falling across other parts of the US, and even Sweden. (I’m wary of the Swedes at the best of times and this, where birds are being piffed at your head from above, is surely not even close to the okay of times.) Why is the sky no longer holding up our feathered friends? (Not my friends, but possibly yours.)


A genuine signal of the end of the world, I hear you ask??  Birds rising up to take on their human oppressors with a really average, kamikaze style plan? Debate has raged, as it should, on the reasons why such an occurrence, occurred, and well know expert Kirk Cameron from Growing Pains added a pinch of his thoughts to the pot.


http://www.examiner.com/political-transcripts-in-national/kirk-cameron-bird-death-spin-more-pagan-mythology-than-christian-apocalypse


Kirk Cameron seems to be a religious spokesperson now, with about 80 (6) children. He suggests that falling birds as a religious sign of the apocalypse is more from pagan, rather than Christian, mythology, so don’t panic. He then complains about the state of American politics.


Thanks for that Kirk.  His even approach does make you think that whilst looking apocalyptic (like when you leave your house and don’t see any cars or people and for about 3 seconds you think you could be the only person left on earth, until, oops, there’s the postman) maybe there are more than terrifying, supernatural reasons for this bird rain.   

This is what national geographic have to say.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110106-birds-falling-from-sky-bird-deaths-arkansas-science/


Sensible and calm, as you’d expect for Nat G. They pretty much say birds lose it in flight all the time and it’s coincidental that these occurrences, occurred, during a pretty slow news day. They do sport this little sentence of joy in the report. "Young birds that hatch in the spring have an approximately 75 percent chance of not reaching their first birthdays.” Sucks to be a bird, even with the joy of flight.


So whilst being super creepy, and potentially disease riddled, whatever side you take there may not be anything to worry about with this whole animals being rain thing. Store your raining cats and dogs pants for another day.

*

 

London tomorrow, something has seriously changed for 9 degrees to feel positively balmy. It’ll be mild as tomorrow, but take a brolly in the off chance of something, anything (probably water), falling from the sky.