Two-thousand birds and 100,000 fish died in Arkansas about 100 miles apart, and so far nobody knows the reason. The media is all over the story. Such news gives us a little fear because it seems like the beginning of a horror movie or an end-of-the world movie. Animals start dying for no reason, and then. . . .? For example, in Alfred Hitchock’s The Birds, a character in the movie refers to a real-life mystifying incident where birds in a California town started hitting buildings and dying, implying a connection to the later horror in the fictional story.
Hopefully, the scientists will figure out the causes. They at least partly solved the mystery of some of the honey bee deaths in recent years. Some scientists discovered the bees were dying from a combination of a fungus and a virus, even as the bee population continues to decline. But, if scientists do not discover the causes for the recent Arkansas fish and foul deaths, it is not such a bad thing for us to be bewildered for awhile. It sparks the imagination.
I have not watched The Birds in a long time. It was one of the first scary movies I saw as a child, so it carries disturbing baggage for me. The special effects seem unreal today, but the movie is still spooky. One of the best parts of the movie is that they never explain why the birds are attacking. Why are the birds suddenly attacking people? Does it have something to do with the lead character’s past? Alfred Hitchcock was a genius to not explain the attacks. By contrast, M. Night Shyamalan might have made The Happening a better movie had he learned that lesson. Unanswered dark questions terrify us more than the beaks and claws.
In honor of fallen feathered and gilled friends, check out the movie The Birds.
Bonus Byrds Explanation: For those of you who believe there must be a reason for the bird deaths, here are some Byrds who agree that everything has a time to every purpose under heaven.
Bonus Update (1/8/11): Google Maps now has a world map showing where the latest mass animal deaths have occurred.
(Related Posts)
That story is really bizarre. Or is it. . . ? In 1989, I was working in Niagara Falls, Canada when one of those birds tried to kill me by landing on my head and carrying me away. Lucky for me, my hair, while beautiful and lustrous, is not strong enough to allow a bird to grab it with his pointy claws and lift me off the ground. Maybe not so lucky for the birds since I’ve harbored ill will towards them ever since. Maybe my voodoo medicine finally kicked in.
Maybe you were lucky that the bird was not able to get the other birds to join in. Glad you survived.
“The Birds” was also the first scary movie I ever watched as well. Then when I finally made it thru the movie, my brothers and I decided to take our minds off the movie by playing Super Nintendo. Then of course the boss on the level we finished was a big ugly bird that we had to take down.
Interesting thought on “The Happening.” I loved that movie, and love all of his movies.
I hope you were able to take down the big ugly bird. M. Night Shyamalan does a good job on his movies, and he sometimes gets unfair criticism about his twist endings, perhaps because he has not yet surpassed “The Sixth Sense.” But movies like “Signs,” “The Village,” and “The Happening” do a very good job of creating a creepy atmosphere throughout the viewing of the movies, even if you are disappointed by the explanations at the end.