Downtown Austin re-opening. Birds still dead.
Emily Ramshaw is pounding the pavement on the Dead Bird Beat.
Congress Ave. is going to be open again any minute, she reports from a press conference that just ended.
Final body count – sparrows, pigeons and grackles – 63 birds. None on the rooftops, all scattered along Congress Ave., found mostly between 3 and 6 a.m.
63 corpses, man. It's either the Apocalypse, or there's a speaker's race going on.
Authorities figure they were either poisoned intentionally or suffered from a bacterial infection. But after shutting off downtown all morning – to let everyone from special-ops to HazMat crews to the National Guard check out the situation (yes, the National Guard) - they’ve declared the health threat over and are going to start letting people come to work again.
Emily reports that police say they were first notified about the dead birds by Austinites passing through downtown. She said witnesses and authorities “could tell something was up because, early on, they could see the birds were acting really awkward, crashing into things, unable to fly.”
Emily says that authorities have done environmental testing, they’ve checked the birds bodies for pesticides, and are trying to find out if any have been swimming in Town Lake recently.
OK, I made up that last part. It was actually the Trinity River.
P.S. The DMN Austin bureau's offices are on the ninth floor of a building on Congress and 10th, right smack in the middle of the Dead Bird Zone.
Comments
Dead bird news I can use!
Thanks.
Posted by: Jamie W | January 8, 2007 4:05 PM
Hey, we're Belo.
We tell ya what ya need ta know.
Posted by: brooks | January 8, 2007 8:58 PM