Do you remember the dead birds that fell from the skies in the US and Europe recently?
We never really heard what exactly the reason was for them falling from the sky all together at the same time, did we?
Well, my 4 year old has a few solutions for you:
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The wind blew them onto the ground.
Makes sense. Was my first kind of rational thought too. Big storm, birds get caught and whisked back to earth. -
It was raining so hard, it rained them on the ground.
Yeah, not bad. In the same line of bad weather phenomena. Plus rain makes their wings wet and heavy. In this case it was not raining cats and dogs, but birds… -
The flew against a tree. No no, a signpost.
Right. I had come up with the odd obstacle as well like airplanes and such. Must have been a lot of signposts around that area in Arkansas! -
It rained and they opened their mouths -birds have beaks dear- …beaks, drank too much rain and got sick.
Mmmh. Now we’re getting creative! Acid rain. I guess that could kill a bird or two.
Now acid rain is more of a deposition than rain really. So I guess they must have flown in that rain for a very long time to be affected in a way to make them drop to earth.
However, the principal natural phenomena that contribute acid-producing gases to the atmosphere are emissions from volcanoes.
So maybe those birds have been hovering too long above Eyjafjallajökull recently. And here is how my son solved that problem.
In the same series:
How a 4 year old solves the Greek debt crisis