Aflockolypse?

Birds are still falling from the sky. Sea creatures are still dying en-masse. But a recent blurb in an Audubon blog and clear thinking by an Alaskan writer seeks to make everything alright.

According to Alisa Opar, writing in Audubon magazine's blog The Perch, experts are saying that we shouldn’t read too much into the reported bird deaths.

“Mass bird die-offs can be caused by starvation, storms, disease, pesticides, collisions with man-made structures or human disturbance,” says Greg Butcher, Audubon’s director of bird conservation.

Reports Opar:

"Isolated die-offs don’t pose a significant threat to our native bird populations, says Melanie Driscoll, Audubon’s director of bird conservation for the Mississippi River Flyway. 'Far more concerning in the long term are the myriad other threats birds face, from widespread habitat destruction and global climate change to inappropriate energy development and invasive species.' "

Yet more comfort comes from The Alaskan Dispatch in which Craig Medred wrote on January 10th:

"...one of the first rules of science -- especially really, really bad science -- is that if you look hard enough you will find that for which you are looking. Now it has been found.

The birds are dying! The fish are dying! Everything is dying!

And, of course, we all know everything is supposed to live forever, right?"
***

What logic, what clear thinking: There is nothing left to argue, right?

Ok, so perhaps I am looking for black helicopters in the night sky, but I still find it queer that of the many fish die offs, one big one had all the fish missing their eyes. I still find it queer that Arkansas weather radar showed something unexplainable in the sky at the time of their now famous bird kill.

In days of old when the canary died in the mine the miners made for the exit. Didn't they know that everything dies? You bet they did. That is why they scrambled to the surface.