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New Year’s Eve Fireworks

January 2, 2012 by · Comments Off on New Year’s Eve Fireworks 

New Year's Eve FireworksNew Year’s Eve Fireworks, Call off the apocalyptic predictions. The 200 blackbirds that fell from the sky in a small Arkansas town on New Years Day were targeted by someone with fireworks, experts say.

The dead birds caused a stir because this is the second New Years in a row that their carcasses have littered the streets of Beebe, Arkansas. Last year, some 4,000 dead birds were found across town.

However, this year investigators found fireworks near a roost. They believe someone deliberately spooked the birds into a frenzy, hoping they would drop from the sky.

Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said it is investigating the bird deaths this year as a criminal — rather than a supernatural — matter.

Most scientists agreed that the 4,000 birds that died last year were the result of fireworks in the town – which frightened them.

The terrified fowl panicked and flew into buildings, trees and each other, dropping dead to the ground, researchers believe.

This year, hoping to prevent that, police in Beebe, a town of 5,000, rushed through an emergency ban on fireworks for New Years.

‘We know that there was evidence of fireworks set off in the middle of the roost, and it wasn’t a coincidence,’ Fish and Game Commission spokeswoman Genny Porter said.

Until this revelation, the birds raining on the town again this year spooked residents.

‘I thought the Mayor was messing with me when he called me,’ said Milton McCullar, the street department supervisor in Beebe, Arkansas.

‘He got me up at 4:00 in the morning and told me we had birds falling out of he sky.’ Mr McCullar told ABC News.

Researchers say if blackbirds were spooked out of their roost at night, they would be vulnerable.

‘Most of these birds don’t see any better at night than you or I do. They aren’t adapted to see at night like owls so if they went off from their perches at night they’re blind at night just like you would be’ said Dr Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist from Cornell University.

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