What's next to die in Arkansas? Now 100,000 dead FISH are found washed up... after 1,000 blackbirds fell from the sky
Residents of Arkansas must be wondering what they are going to find next.
More than 100,000 fish have been found washed up on the banks of the Arkansas River - as 1,000 blackbirds fell from the sky in the nearby town of Beebe.
The bizarre incidents appear to be unrelated but many locals will be contemplating whether the piles of animal corpses provide an eerie omen for the New Year.
Environmental experts believe disease killed the fish while the violent storms that swept that state over the weekend may account for the fallen birds.
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Drum fish: Some 100,000 of the species were found lining the banks of the Arkansas River
Arkansas River: The drum fish were found on a 20-mile stretch along the river near Ozark
The dead drum fish were discovered by a tug boat operator on the river banks on a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River, near Ozark. on Thursday.
David Price, who spotted the fish from his parents' Roseville house, located on the banks of the river, pointed and said: 'Over from down here at the bottom of the rocks, out maybe 40 or 50 feet, there were just thousands of fish along the shorebanks all the way around the river here.
'This is kind of amazing because the the fish were about a pound and a half a piece.'
Travis Harmon of the Department of Environmental Quality said: 'Barges reported passing up river and churning up dead fish from the bottom of the river.
'A single species is killed, and we don't know the cause. If it was toxic, other species would be affected.'
Fisheries officials collected some of the dying animals near Roseville to conduct tests and while Keith Stephens of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission says that a mass fish kill happens from time to time, this case is particularly unusual.
'The fish kill only affected one species of fish,' he said. 'If it was from a pollutant, it would have affected all of the fish, not just drum fish.'
Ozark is about 125 miles west of the town of Beebe, where game wardens are trying to find out why up to 5,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings fell from the sky just before midnight New Year's Eve.
Biologists believe the bird deaths were stress-related from either fireworks or weather and are unrelated to the fish kill near Ozark, Mr Stephens said.
Although the two incident occurred one after the other, Mr Stephens said he believed that they were unrelated.
Carnage: Vehicles speed toward the bodies of blackbirds that fell from the sky in Arkansas
Tragic: A dead bird lies on the ground in Beebe, Arkansas, after more than 1,000 fell from the sky on New Year's Eve
Gruesome aftermath: A U.S. Enviromental Services worker picks up a dead bird in Beebe as more carcasses lie behind him
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