ton, Wisconsin, on January 14,
the religious doomsayers got into
the act. Expectedly, birds falling
dead from the sky and fish washing
ashore in such numbers all over the
globe conjured up images of a bibli-
cal prophesy. Religious bloggers
reminded anyone who would listen
to heed the words of Hosea 4:1–3:
“The land dries up, and all who live
in it waste away; the beasts of the
field, the birds in the sky and the
fish in the sea are swept away.”
Based on my own experience
in Montreal, I am willing to bet
that many of my colleagues in
ornithology were getting plenty of
pressure to do media interviews.
I quickly detected two lines of
thought among the media. Some,
especially the tabloids, were des-
perately trying to connect the dots
between the various bird and fish
deaths, while others were criticiz-
ing their own industry for generat-
ing mass hysteria.
