ABC has a report here and it describes the birds’ very odd behavior prior to their deaths. In the video below, the reporter actually says that the police told them that the birds attacked a van and the driver had no choice but to drive through them.
The Towson Patch has some photos here that attest to the superior fighting abilities of the van. At least 75 dead black birds identified as starlings are gruesomely scattered on a busy road in front of the Berkshire Marriott near Towson University. I guess this is another avian mass suicide by ‘blunt force trauma’ case.
Seriously, how could a van kill 75 “attacking” birds at once? I suspect they were already dying or were highly disoriented when they “attacked” the van. Or was the van carrying a cargo that attracts birds like some sort of lethal magnet?
ABC said that Baltimore County’s Bureau of Highways is going to clean up and dispose of the birds. I guess they are not worried at all about the possibility that an emerging disease or some chemical agent killed the birds, even though Towson is not far from Edgewood Arsenal.
In fact, the university has close ties with Edgewood and seems to do quite a bit of its own “bio-defense” research with agents that might affect bird behavior and/or health. In 2004 a bio-defense industry watchdog group, the Sunshine Project, cited Towson University as being less than transparent.
So when the Baltimore Sun’s Steve Earley suggested to the Towson Patch that its own mass bird suicide event had a precedent in the Beebe, Arkansas event that happened about a year ago, he was correct. Beebe residents still believe that some toxin was involved in the aberrant bird behavior that night.
The possibility of the birds having earlier flown through byproducts from the incineration of biological/chemical weapons at nearby Pine Bluff Arsenal is one theory reported in this David Rush interview with a Beebe resident below.
Uploaded by Davidrushnet on Oct 13, 2011
Where the two events differ is that the Beebe deaths were investigated and the Towson deaths are not being investigated, (as far as we know.)
Well, maybe if a flock of sick birds “attacks” a group of Baltimore schoolchildren, public health authorities might pay attention then…when its too late.
And so it goes.
