Icheoku says man's arrogance of self ability and his feeling of being in complete control often times, interferes with his attempt to explain certain given situation, including certain things beyond human comprehension as well as the inexplicable. The recent case of the sudden birds mass suicide both in American State of Arkansas and in Sweden is such an example of man, once again trying to put a name on the mysterious. In both places residents woke up to find grounds littered with carcasses of birds that had fallen from the sky overnight.
Icheoku ponders whether those birds had a suicide pact or had drank of some poisoned cool-aid like Reverend Jones congregation in Guyana of the eighties? But some egg-heads went on the punditry, trying to explain why birds, a natural arboreal animals, would just tumble out of the sky. Their explanation went from the mundane to the unbelievable with some of them suggesting that those dead birds were spooked by fireworks and they went into a tizzy, resulting in their mass suicide? Icheoku says what a balderdash of an explanation as these deaths were confined only in those two localities and there were fireworks in several thousands of other places but none of them reported such a scene from a Stephen King horror novel. Icheoku says if fireworks really caused those birds to tumble down from the skies, why was it only in those two faraway neighborhoods of Arkansas and Sweden that it was that potent? It does not make sense and these researchers should better go back to their laboratories and employing mega-microscopes, try and determine the real scientific cause of those birds deaths. In a more normal society of men where egos do not run riotous, an act of mother nature would have simply been explained as the root-cause and blamed for doing what it wanted with its birds. Mother nature acts as it pleases and it gave birds the right to fly and can as well make them loose their flighty skills, causing them to tumble out of the skies to their death.
These are wild animals that are used to living with hazardous wild conditions and no fireworks packs as much punch as thunder and lighting, which are regular occurrence in the wild,to have caused the havoc in the birds' kingdom and therefore, it is insulting to just try to explain it away in this cavalier manner. There was more to it than meets the eye; but Icheoku's most plausible theory is that mother-nature just called, leaving in its trail, thousands of dead birds; period. Further, were it fireworks that brought down those birds, why was it only a particular type of bird that were killed and not every bird within the blast area or vicinity? What is it about or so susceptible to those red-winged blackbirds as to make them the weakest-link in the birds kingdom to make them the sacrificial offal to whatever it is that triggered the mass death? Why were their deaths only confined in those area and in that relatively little numbers compared to the known typical roost strengths of blackbirds? Why is no one tinkering with the possibility that those birds might have been victims of some pesticide that were sprayed on some crops which they pecked on and were poisoned as a result, before getting disorientated and losing their flight skills, then tumbled out of the sky to their deaths. Could they have drank from a poisoned lake or water-pond that contained arsenic and died as a result; and 2011 is not the first and only year in history that fireworks were exploded to usher in a new year or mark other festivities.
Icheoku is simply not buying the dumb explanation of death by fireworks and urge those scientists involved to do further examinations in order to fathom the true cause of these birds massacre. And fireworks did not explain the mass suicide of over 83,000 drum-fish in Arkansas River or the over two million fish that similarly gave up their ghost in Maryland Chespaeke Bay waters or the over 40,000 dead crabs that washed ashore in United Kingdom or other similar animal mass suicide as reported in Louisiana, Kentucky, Brazil and New Zealand; as well as in Falköping, southeast of Skövde, Sweden where about 100 jackdaw birds were found dead on a street.
As one witness quipped, "the birds will not be missed because their large roosts like the one at Beebe-Arkansas can have thousands of birds that leave ankle to knee deep piles of droppings in places"; so Icheoku queries whether it is not mother-nature trying to impose a forced population control on the bird's community that took some of them out of circulation? A bird specie that is said to number somewhere between 100 million and 200 million throughout America and thousands of them can easily roost in one tree, should be such a fair target for forced attrition by mother-nature. Their autopsy revealed that "they died from massive trauma primarily to their breast tissue, with blood clotting and bleeding in the body cavities"; which Icheoku says does not explain what happened as they could easily have sustained described injury upon hitting the ground. It will be recalled that this is not the first time such act of population control by mother nature is taking place in the world of wildlife:- in 2001, lightning killed dozens of mallards as well as pelicans in Hot Springs Arkansas; in 1973, hail knocked hundreds of birds out of the sky at Stuttgart, Arkansas and you wonder whats up with birds mass suicide and Arkansas or is it about time they migrated out?
Icheoku will conclude by re-echoing the statement by a Swedish wildlife official, who honestly admitted that "they don’t know exactly what happened yet, but that they will continue the investigation.” That is the key, the way to unravel the mystery of thousands of birds falling to their death from the sky - they should continue with the investigation until they have something to say truthfully about the Hitchcock movie came alive, rather than the present arrogant attempt at explaining those birds mortis causa as fireworks. It is dumb; dumb; dumb and unconvincing!
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Christy 'Apena' Essien-Igbokwe , the wife of Jegede Shokoya of the New Masquerade and Nigeria's lady of songs is dead; she was 51years old. Although her family claimed that "brief Illness" killed her like so many Nigerians; Icheoku retorts that it was most likely AKwa Ibom voodoo and remote control that was used to arrest her. It is on record that she had fallen out with the governor of her native Akwa Ibiom State and have been having a relentless war for political turf with the governor? So who knows whether she was sacrificed to Ekpe cult or even Alusi-Okija as an offal; afterall African science is still very much alive and portent. May her soul rest in peace.
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Mass bird, fish deaths occur regularly
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AP – Randy Edsall puts on a University of Maryland hat after being introduced as the new head football coach …
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer – 1 hr 55 mins ago
WASHINGTON – First, the blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas. In recent days, wildlife have mysteriously died in big numbers: 2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world. Blogs connected the deadly dots, joking about the "aflockalypse" while others saw real signs of something sinister, either biblical or environmental.
The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated.
Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America. Usually, we don't notice them and don't try to link them to each other.
"They generally fly under the radar," said ornithologist John Wiens, chief scientist at the California research institution PRBO Conservation Science.
Since the 1970s, the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin has tracked mass deaths among birds, fish and other critters, said wildlife disease specialist LeAnn White. At times the sky and the streams just turn deadly. Sometimes it's disease, sometimes pollution. Other times it's just a mystery.
In the past eight months, the USGS has logged 95 mass wildlife die-offs in North America and that's probably a dramatic undercount, White said. The list includes 900 some turkey vultures that seemed to drown and starve in the Florida Keys, 4,300 ducks killed by parasites in Minnesota, 1,500 salamanders done in by a virus in Idaho, 2,000 bats that died of rabies in Texas, and the still mysterious death of 2,750 sea birds in California.
On average, 163 such events are reported to the federal government each year, according to USGS records. And there have been much larger die-offs than the 3,000 blackbirds in Arkansas. Twice in the summer of 1996, more than 100,000 ducks died of botulism in Canada.
"Depending on the species, these things don't even get reported," White said.
Weather — cold and wet weather like in Arkansas New Year's Eve when the birds fell out of the sky — is often associated with mass bird deaths, ornithologists say. Pollution, parasites and disease also cause mass deaths. Some are even blaming fireworks for the blackbird deaths.
So what's happening this time?
Blame technology, says famed Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. With the Internet, cell phones and worldwide communications, people are noticing events, connecting the dots more.
"This instant and global communication, it's just a human instinct to read mystery and portents of dangers and wondrous things in events that are unusual," Wilson told The Associated Press on Thursday. "Not to worry, these are not portents that the world is about to come to an end."
Wilson and the others say instant communications — especially when people can whip out smart phones to take pictures of critter carcasses and then post them on the Internet — is giving a skewed view of what is happening in the environment.
The irony is that mass die-offs — usually of animals with large populations — are getting the attention while a larger but slower mass extinction of thousands of species because of human activity is ignored, Wilson said