Are such things some sort of an omen?

There was a curious news item in the newspapers of January 5th 2011. I am particularly referring to that which appeared in the Times of India. The paper carried a bold headline:

         "In Arkansas, mystery over 3000 birds falling out of the sky"

There was a photograph too of a felled, bleeding blackbird lying on the ground very, very much dead.

At this point I quote what is written in the report:

    "Still, officials acknowledge it's unlikely they'll ever pinpoint a cause with certainty."

This incident is reputed to have happened on New Year day in the town of Beebe in Central Arkansas.

The real danger lies in the fact that the article opens with the letters "Celebratory fireworks likely sent thousands of discombobulated...  "(whatever that means! Why not confused or disconcerted?) "birds into such a tizzy that they... and so on"

With this apparent attribution of such a mysterious event to 'celebratory fireworks', a reader who reads the news is lulled into an ignorant slumber that could be dangerously comfortable.

I say 'dangerously comfortable' because actually the reasons are unknown (celebratory fireworks are taking place for years and all over the world and such things are totally uncommon) and gives a false sense of security to Man that actually, everything is o.k.

The news item says that this was "the second mass wild-life death in Arkansas in recent days. Last week, about 83,000 dead and dying drum fish washed up along a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River, about 100 miles west of Beebe. (Here again, it was only one species of fish that had died. Not all fish. So the people speculated that perhaps they were felled by some sort of a disease!)

Then again, the papers reported (Jan 7th, Times of India)  that more birds were struck the next day too! (was there fireworks again?). But by now, the modern human with short attention span, had relegated the news to a very insignificant three line episode that was lost in the newspaper. People had already got bored.

Such news items makes me sit up and wonder. Or am I getting paranoid?

There is a likelihood that I am being overly-sensitive because, just the day-before-yesterday, (I think it was on the 6th or the 7th of January at around 10 or 10:30 a.m.) the Udaya T.V. news channel had shown a rather long duration clipping of a green auto-rickshaw being driven at an uncommonly high speed IN REVERSE along the main roads of Bangalore. Usually a rickshaw driven in reverse, (to my mind), cannot be driven at such high speeds and that too in such a steady manner. Yet you have it!  Anyway the driver was mindful of stopping at traffic signals!

Am I being paranoid?