I've become more and more interested lately in those "End of Days" prophecies.
I'm not usually a Biblical sort of guy, really.
I mean, I try to do good and help out people when I can, but I do it more for the sake of not being a jerk than because somebody with omnipotent powers is keeping his or her eyes on me.
Also, there's that fear of ending up in the afterlife and hearing, "Oh, you chose the wrong one to worship. Sorry, pit of fire for you. Off you go now."
But I've been looking up Revelations and all the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse stuff ever since the news started reporting about whole flocks of birds dropping dead out of the sky this month.
On New Year's Day in Arkansas, thousands of birds fell dead, and later in the same state, thousands of fish turned up dead in a river.
At first I was thinking, "Well, scratch Arkansas off the vacation list."
But then a few days later in Kentucky, Louisiana and even Sweden, thousands more birds were mysteriously found dead.
Now, I didn't pay much attention in Sunday school when I was a kid, and I'm sure they didn't cover the Apocalypse for seven-year-olds anyway, but I do remember something about frogs, fish and locusts somewhere. But not birds.
I started getting worried I would be caught totally by surprise by the end of the world.
I'd hate to have the wrong date printed on my party invitations, after all.
So, doing a quick Internet search, I learned that flocks of birds dropping dead out of the sky were not, indeed, a sign of the End of Days.
If you had your seas and rivers turning to blood, painful sores on people, scorching sun and giant, 100-pound hailstones falling on everyone (hey, look it up), then that would be the Christian big goodbye.
Of course, the Book of Hosea (from the Hebrew Bible) does have an apocalyptic prophesy that says, "Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away."
So, depending on whom you read and how you interpret it, we may or may not be in big trouble.
So what about all these birds, anyway?
Well, autopsies on the Arkansas birds revealed no toxins or foul (or even fowl) play. The experts say it was likely fireworks or something that killed the birds.
Experts also say these things actually happen all the time, with flocks being killed by planes, hail, lightning and any number of bizarre things - including fireworks, apparently.
Media simply picked up on all the disparate bird stories this month from all over the world and lumped them together to appeal to some "the-world-is-ending" fascination humans seem to have developed.
It didn't end in 2000 with the big computer glitch, and it won't end in 2012 when the Mayan calendar ends (I think you just have to buy a new Mayan calendar when this one ends - like any other calendar).
So relax, it's not the end of the world - just a slow news day.
