In case your New Year’s resolution was to avoid all news media, you should know that as the year turned to 2011, approximately 5,000 dead Red-winged Blackbirds, starlings and grackles fell out of the sky in Beebe, Arkansas. About the same time, around 100,000 young drum fish washed ashore on the banks of the Arkansas River. And on January 4, two million dead juvenile spot fish floated to the surface of Chesapeake Bay.

Of course, once you have a few articles on a topic, many more are sure to follow. Similar events that may have escaped notice a few weeks ago are suddenly headline news:

A Charisma Magazine article stated, “In the United Kingdom, 40,000 velvet swimming crabs died early this year. …Then, in Italy, another 1,000 birds were mysteriously killed.” There were the dead birds found in Kentucky and Louisiana. Yesterday, The Huffington Post ran a headline proclaiming: “Dead Birds Fall From Sky In Sweden, Millions Of Dead Fish Found In Maryland, Brazil, New Zealand.”

With so much to speculate about, theories have proliferated as fast as ants at a picnic. It seems that everyone has the explanation for these events.

• The Magnetic Pole theory: “The steady and rapid movement of the Magnetic North Pole may be responsible for the recent, sudden and mysterious death of thousands of birds and millions of fish in the U.S.”

• The Secret Chemical Warfare Experiment theory:… this past week’s transport of Iraqi Phosgene poisonous gas aboard a US Air Force KC-767 tanker aircraft from Little Rock Air Force Base enroute to Afghanistan that shortly after takeoff had a ‘critical malfunction’ of its aerial spraying computer directed command and control system over central Arkansas causing the deaths of thousands of red-wing blackbirds.

Even more chilling than this incident is this GRU report stating that it was the second “accidental” release of Phosgene poisonous gas in as many days, as the day before, this same US Air Force KC-767 tanker aircraft also had a “critical malfunction” causing a release over the Arkansas River that killed over 100,000 fish.

• The Judgment of God theory: Propounded most prominently by Cindy Jacobs, she states:

The blackbirds fell to the ground in Beebe, Arkansas. Well the Governor of Arkansas’ name is Beebe. And also, there was something put out of Arkansas called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ by a former Governor, this was proposed, Bill Clinton. As so, could there be a connection between this passage [Hosea 4] and now that we’ve had the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” where people now legally in the United States have broken restraints with the Scripture because the Scripture says in Romans 1 that homosexuality is not allowed.

It could be because we have said it’s okay for people who commit these kinds of acts to be recognized in our military for the first time in our history, there is a potential that there is something that actually happened in the land where a hundred thousand drum fish died and also where these birds just fell out of the air.

I admit, I prefer the explanations offered by the US Fish & Wildlife Service… trauma (perhaps as a result of fireworks on New Year’s Eve that spooked the roosting flock) killed the birds. Disease killed the drum fish. Cold water killed the spot fish. I know a bit about birds and fish and the like, and these causes are plausible.  These events aren’t all that rare, and there are natural explanations for most, if not all, of them.

Then I wonder what theories the Egyptians came up with to explain the plague of flies, the hail, and the Nile turning to blood.

If God did want to warn us about a coming judgment, how would He do it? Is Cindy Jacobs right—could God be trying to get our attention by killing off thousands of birds and fish? Are the scientists right?

What do you think?