Life Irritates Art

Tonight, the world can sleep.

Interestingly, it was the blue-stained turtle doves that finally broke the case and led to the downfall of Interpol's most wanted bad guy, George "Dubya" Bush.

And tonight, the world can rest easy. Let's review the timeline.

First, we learned that over ten thousand red-winged blackbirds in Arkansas had all died, at the same time, if you can believe that a coroner in Arkansas ran rapid forensics on ten thousand birds.

Within the hour, FlocksNews and the other 24-hour-a-day news channels were blasting out news alerts. FlocksNews cut into their fascinating three-part series on an alarming rise in cat obesity, generated a new set of we're-all-going-to-die public-alarm panic graphics, and sat-linked to their local Arkansas TV/newspaper affiliate, KRAK. ("KRAK-TV. We cover the news forwards, and, um ... uh ... and, uh ... that other way, too.")

A reporter who often works for KRAK interviewed a partially-dressed resident who was in his front yard, cooking something on a stick. "They just went crazy. Just flyin' into once another and droppin' outer sky like manner from heh-uhm. Why, I kernt bag 'em fass enough. I had to call my wife," stated the resident, a light reader who only buys KRAK on the weekends.

An alert blogger who gets KRAK daily noted that, at or near the time of the fowl incident, George "Dubya" Bush had been spotted at his Texas ranch, smiling that way he does.

Several scientists from NASA who, thanks to budget cuts, had absolutely nothing going on, suggested that the plummet-happy birds may have been spooked by fireworks, or an Arkansas bimbo eruption. Ornithologists had no comment to make, since none of these birds, technically, were Orniths.

According to another expert, the blackbirds may have been roosting for the night, were somehow startled into flight, and at that point the birds all ran into each other. As the segment producer at FlocksNews later noted, this is the kind of expert you really want to avoid.

Then things really started getting weird. A report crossed the news wire, describing a similarly large bird dropping in Louisiana, and then another in Florida (the dead birds that landed in Palm Beach County had to be recounted).

An alert conspiracy theorist noted that, earlier in the day, Dubya had called his brother, Jeb, in Florida, and had then pointed up in the sky, smiling, you know, that way he does.

One Florida non-resident (which is redundant) cited a high incidence of "blunt force trauma," but an alert reporter soon discovered that the drug dealer (aka: "undocumented transient pharmacist") was simply referring to a road rage incident at a North Miami mall.

All across America, copycat theories were tossed around, particularly among people who, in the mid-morning, were already drinking heavily. Were these events somehow related? Had the Florida birds been watching FlocksNews? Did birds in Florida have cable?

Suddenly, the plot thickened. The list of usual suspects got unusual. Off the coast of Maryland, over two million bottom-feeding drum fish went belly-up, if you can believe that Maryland has an off-shore bottom-feeding coroner's office. Next, large numbers of New Zealand snapper began bay-bobbing. Not to be outdone by capitalist fauna, Vietnamese tilapia began beachheading like Niobe after lunch.

Next in the day's events, FlocksNews reported that Saudi Arabia had detained a vulture, which had been accused of being an Israeli spy. That has absolutely nothing to do with my story, but there's no way I'm missing the chance to say that.

Meanwhile, the modified behavior crisis spread to other species. The Santa Barbara skunk population exploded, and even in Santa Barbara, you just don't need exploding skunks. At the Memphis zoo, the pandas stopped mating and had to be temporarily banned from Beale Street blues clubs. One of the Thanksgiving turkeys that had previously been pardoned by President Obama scribbled a bitter note about "national emblems" and "bald eagles" and then committed suicide by deep-frying itself.

Scientists pointed out that bulk de-beastings such as these happened all the time. Long ago, you'll recall, all the dinosaurs vanished, around 3pm on a Thursday, after getting hit by a Bruce Willis movie. More recently, a quarter of a million ducks suddenly died one year in Canada after eating a bad oyster, but they were all reanimated after migrating to America to take advantage of quality health care.

As the news day went on, more birds croaked in Sweden and Denmark. Additional fish did the big sand suck in South Carolina and Brazil. Forty thousand crabs floated up in the United Kingdom, and over eight thousand turtle doves dropped to earth in Italy, with odd blue stains on their beaks.

Blue stains? Blue? Why blue?

Someone selling "get in touch with your inner child NOW" voodoo dolls blamed the massive Brazilian fish deaths on the oceanic equivalent of psychic trauma: last year, fish from Brazil had gone to Jim-Jones-Kool-Aid-Land, too, and this year's fish had simply not yet gotten over last year's gang-bladder-bloat.

Obviously, it was just a matter of time before an alert anonymous person mentioned the 2012 Mayans. And obviously, the person was a psychotic, potentially dangerous, utter moron. But, on the other hand, the guy was alert, so FlocksNews generated a new we're-all-going-to-die panic graphic and gave the whacko his own show.

Obviously.

In the meantime, an alert anagram artist, working with a seemingly unrelated collection of cereal box tops, deduced that the state of Arkansas did not, in fact, exist. He claimed Arkansas was just a very realistic CGI effect from "Chaws," an early Steven Spielberg movie about Midwest land sharks and shady real estate deals.

But for an alert revisionist historian at the George Soros Institute For Unadvanced Studies, something still nagged. Something about those blue stains on those post-trauma pre-trattoria turtle doves. And, after tossing facts aside and ducking incoming bales of money, the research team finally hit on the elusive relationship matrix.

Doves = Peace. Dubya hates peace, almost as much as he hates grandparents and clean air.

Blue = Blue State = Democrat. 'Nuff said.

So there it was. Dubya. The Jackal. The scourge of international law, busted and bagged.

Granted, for a brief moment, an alert Second Amendment hater blamed Dick Cheney instead of Dubya. But then someone else pointed out how unlikely that would be, given what happened the last time Dick Cheney tried to hit a bird with a gun.

And so, tonight, the world sleeps.

And as it turns out, the experts at FlocksNews were right. We are all going to die.

Eventually.