Canary in a Coal Mine?

I had some difficulty getting to work this morning, as traffic was extremely backed up several blocks from my office building. I finally realized that Congress Avenue (Austin’s main downtown street) was blocked off for some reason. When I eventually reached the parking garage for my building, there was a sign taped up over the card reader that said: “Building closed due to police emergency.” Hoping to find out what was going on, I parked anyway and walked to the elevators. The same sign was taped up on each elevator, and they were shut down. I ran into a woman from my firm as I headed back to my car, and she told me that she’d come in early that morning before they shut the building down, but had just been chased out by the police. She said she’d heard that an unusually large number of dead birds had been found on Congress Avenue and they’d shut the street down to collect them, test the air for chemicals, etc.

I got back in the car to drive home, and became stuck in the ridiculous amount of traffic caused by everyone being forced to flee the downtown area. A ten-mile drive home took me nearly an hour and a half. In all, I believe eleven blocks of Congress Avenue, from the Capitol down to my building, as well as one block on either side of Congress, were shut down. All of the streets were barricaded, with motorcycle cops standing guard at each one. There were all sorts of emergency vehicles, flashing lights, news crews, etc. It was really surreal.

Everything was reopened shortly after noon, and I got back to the office just before two. I’m reading reports now that 63 dead birds were found, and that it’s believed they were poisoned either intentionally or accidentally, but that preliminary tests show no danger to the public. Test results on the dead birds won’t be available for several days, so it remains a mystery for the time being.