Just before midnight on New Year's eve, up to 5,000 blackbirds fell from the Arkansas sky, their mangled corpses leaving a ghastly scene on the ground.

Today we get word that 120 miles away from this mysterious massacre, approximately 100,000 drum fish have turned up dead in the Arkansas River.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission speculates that the birds were felled by a lightning strike or high-altitude hail -- or possibly veered too close to New Year's Eve fireworks and were startled to death.

As for the fish? Since only drum fish seem to be affected, the Commission points to some sort of disease, not a a broader poisoning, which would not have singled out the drum fish.

Just to be on the safe side, all living things should probably avoid Arkansas in 2011.