Informed Speculation

If you live in Austin (or if you read my blog) you might remember a little scare a couple of weeks back when some birds showed up dead and downtown was evacuated.  Well, it was no big deal, after all:

The Great Austin Grackle Kill of ’07 had all sides engaged. Had the birds, which number in the thousands in downtown Austin, been poisoned by some angry loft developer? Or had they died from a bout of overindulgence of mistletoe during the holidays? The answer to both is no, according to experts at Texas A&M University. They say the grackles fell prey to parasites and a sudden dip in temperatures, struck down by a double whammy of bad luck in the bird world.

“Most wild birds have some parasites, but these birds were overwhelmed,” said Lev G. Gayle, executive director of A&M’s veterinary diagnostic lab. Autopsies revealed that the birds had parasites in every organ in their body, even in skeletal muscle and their brains, in a few cases. All wild birds have some level of parasites in their bodies, Gayle said. It was likely these 60, which appeared not to have eaten recently, were the most vulnerable and weakened of a large flock numbering in the hundreds. Increasing parasite levels made them weaker and more susceptible to sudden temperature change.

Oh, well, better safe than sorry…