371 Dead Birds Fall from Sky on LA's Sunset Blvd; Similar to California, Arkansas, Louisiana Bird Drops

371 dead birds fell from the sky over Los Angeles, California, and hit the pavement at Sunset and Cahuenga. In the great shadow of the CNN building laid scattered hundreds of pigeons, most of them dead. This is another incident of dead birds falling from the sky, as has been seen in California, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Sweden, Italy, and other places around the world.

If today's dead bird incident had been a singular event, we could have blamed Los Angeles smog. 371 birds could no longer take the poor air quality and decided to choke and fall.

The bird drop happened just after noon, and word of mouth passed quickly. I heard about the horrific event from my neighbor, who happens to whistle when he talks and has a goiter on his neck. By the time I arrived at Sunset and Cahuenga, confusion was in full swing and the homelesses were busy picking up the dead birds and stuffing them into their dirty jacket pockets.

The dead birds in this incident were exclusively pigeons, but for the homelesses, they were food. One man had already cleaned his fowl and was arguing with a hot dog vendor about frying it on his hot dog grill. The homeless held a bloody knife and shook the pigeon in the vendor's face. The pigeon's entrails hung at least a foot from the pigeon's slashed belly. The guts swayed as the homeless man passionately pointed his knife at the hot dog grill.

In front of the CNN building was pandemonium. Someone had wished bad luck on these pigeons, and the evidence was strewn all around. Dead birds in the gutters, on sidewalks, stuck in palm trees that dotted the front of the famous news building. Traffic on Sunset had come to a crawl. Jeering faces peered out of car windows, and multiple cars had been rear-ended.

The poor pigeons that had landed in the street were mostly squashed. A bloody mess. The pigeons on the sidewalk were mostly collected by the bums. When I first arrived on the scene, I heard the pop and wet crackle of a pigeon corpse being squashed by a slow rolling tire. Twisted, mangled pigeon corpses bleeding in the streets-nothing new for Hollywood, considering Charles Manson, forty years earlier, had preached about blood flowing in America's streets, and the mass chaos that would descend upon a sleeping public.

I talked into my voice recorder trying to understand this mess. There were no officials or news crews of any kind. A horn honked and I looked up in time to see a homeless man get hit by a car as he bent to pick up a dead pigeon in the street. The car had hit its brakes and only tapped the homeless. He still fell and rolled a few feet from the car. Nobody dared help him, everybody knew homelesses stunk and carried disease. The man, still holding his pigeon, stood slowly, brushed off his jacket and pants, and moved back to the sidewalk. The angry motorists honked and some gave him the finger as they drove by. He had dared hold up traffic in L.A., on Sunset, of all places.

The hot dog vendor had abandoned his cart and a dozen or more homelesses were cutting the breasts out of the pigeon corpses and grilling the meat. They had formed a small mob. One whole pigeon corpse, still with feathers and not gutted, sat atop the grill. Soon the smell of burning feathers filled the air-a putrid stench that made me cough into my voice recorder.

I stuck my recorder in the face of a bearded homeless man and shouted over the din, What do you make of all this? He shrugged. Have you taken any pigeons? You'd better before they're all gone.

"I'm a vegetarian," the homeless said and scratched his beard. "I'll wait for the manna." He pointed to the sky. Have you heard of Lyle Shove-It? I asked. "Don't know the name, but I'll keep my ear out." I thanked him and walked over to the hot dog vendor's grill.

I'm with the press, I yelled, and CNN just told me that anybody wishing to fry their birds can do so in their building. I pointed to the CNN building, where the large flat screens showed Anderson Cooper talking. The homelesses looked hesitant. Seriously, I shouted, the cops will bang you up for stealing this grill. CNN has a kitchen in the building. CNN needs to do community service anyway. I'd take them up on their offer.

One man quickly turned his breast meat over and licked his fingers. "Hot," he said. I told them, Roll this grill in there, at least, so the cops can't get at you. CNN said you could bring this grill also. They all had beards. "If they're inviting us," one of them said, and then to the others, "he's right. We don't need no cops in on this here fiasco."

They followed me to the building. A tall black homeless rolled the cart. I held the door for them and said, Quick, quick! They ran inside, the black man pushed the cart in and I shut the door after them. I watched through the glass as the security guard, seated down the hall, stood and raised his hands. The bums hurried down the hallway looking for the kitchen, I assumed.

I left then. That could have been a strange and beautiful scene, but I wanted no part of it. Where will the next birds fall? What about the dead fish? Are the massive die-offs in relation to the Australian flooding? Do pigeons make good eating?