I'm having a Fort-gasm. Seriously, though, this stuff happens all the time. Still really weird and totally creepy, but they'll say it was a waterspout or whatever sciencists need to sleep better at night.

Atma wrote:

aeonic wrote: Seriously, though, this stuff happens all the time. Really? I'm not doubting you, I've just never heard of such a mass amount of Birds/Fish going belly up for some unknown reason.

At least once or twice a year, which, for incidences of crazy stuff falling out of the sky, is pretty frequent. There's been blood, slime mould, feathers, anything. Here's a couple you can easily look up.

Chalon-sur-Saone, France, Sept 1922- Rain of toads. Similar fall in June 1979 carpeted Comotini, Greece and left thousands of dead frogs that brought traffic to a standstill.

India, mid-may 1831- Rain of dead, dry fish, also England 24 August 1918, a shower of stiff, dead eels outside of Sunderland.

1990- Showers of straw reported in England and Switzerland

September 1995, Edinburgh tennis tournament covered in a shower of fresh human excrement, no flights passing over the area.

$7070 dollars in bills fluttered down onto a freeway in Boston Mass during 1957, as did thousands of 1000-franc notes in bourges, France.

July 1869- Blood, flesh and pieces of internal organ fall over a two acre expanse on a farm where a funeral was taking place.

Literally, it just goes on and on. The Welsh actually have a name (pwdre ser) which means star rot, named for material that has a spongy but otherwise unknown origin that's fallen repeatedly in the area.

joshwoodzy wrote:

I think you just proved how infrequently this shit happens aeonic.

How? I only cited a few incidents. There's a completely different partial list of more under http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fafrotskies . I think if you indiced the occurrences, you'd be staggered at how many actually happen.

joshwoodzy wrote:

Most people reacting to this are like "OMG, this only happens like once a century!" which I know is bogus. But on the other side people are saying "Oh this happens every year!" which is just as bogus. It may not be "rare" but it sure as hell ain't common.

Once or twice a year isn't enough for you? Put it to you this way: Pliny's Natural History in 77 AD discusses the phenomenon. This isn't exactly something new, and it isn't exactly rare. Syzygy is rare. These are uncommon.

Atma wrote:

Way I look at it is, we have our fireworks usually twice a year, New Years Eve and the 4th of July, and we sure as hell don't have 5000 birds falling out of the Sky. If fact, I've never seen a dead bird laying in the streets anytime after those holidays. Those birds were RAINING down on the folks of Arkansas.

Knowing how all the people in Ft. Myers love to get those fireworks for "mining purposes or sporting events" around that time, yeah, I know exactly what you mean, Atma. When I was living out in Cape Coral, there would be massive plumes of sulphur-ey smoke all about, and you didn't see any flocks of gulls just dropping out of the sky. I do have repeated incidents in my life where, since childhood, decapitated birds fall out of the trees around me, but I'm pretty sure that's not the same thing, nor does it have anything to do with fireworks either. It's just kind of scary.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/another-large-bird-kill-reported-this-time-in-louisiana

Five hundred this time?