Everyone enjoys a good joke, a gentle ribbing, a harmless prank.  But, my goodness:  enough is enough!

Every day I scan the headlines and there's another story about dead birds, fish, and even crabs.  I mean, who's running this planet?  Is it Mother Nature or M. Night Shyamalan?  Here's a partial list of events that have occurred over the past two weeks.

12/30/10:  100,000 fish wash up along the Arkansas River
12/30/10:  100 tons of dead fish, sardines, catfish wash up in Rio De Janerio
12/31/10:  1000s of dead red wing black birds found in Arkansas

1/1/11:  100s of dead birds in Kentucky
1/4/11:  500 dead red wing black birds found in Louisiana
1/4/11:  100s of dead fish wash ashore in Ontario

1/4/11:  1000s of dead fish found in a creek in Florida
1/5/11:  2 million dead fish found in the Chesapeake Bay
1/5/11:  200 dead birds found in Texas

1/5/11:  150 dead birds found in Tennessee (at what other time would this seem like a small number?)
1/5/11:  100 dead crows found on the street in Sweden
1/5/11:  40,000 dead crabs washed ashore in England

1/5/11:  100s of red snapper found dead in New Zealand
1/6/11:  1000s of gizzard shad (a 4" long fish) found dead in Lake Michigan near Chicago
1/8/11:  Dozens of starlings (birds) were found dead in Romania

Check out a map of these events here.  Theories abound including everything from fireworks to sonic booms to some kind of virus.  But the best explanation I've heard is regarding the starlings that were found dead in Romania.  They say that the birds drank themselves to death.  Apparently the villagers in one town forgot to clean up after their annual wine-making event.  The birds ate the leftover grapes, and their drinking binge went a-fowl.  I guess this is the story you get when you combine Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath with Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  Maybe they should call it The Grapes of Wrath and Destruction!