Thousands of starlings poisoned by AD

[Guest guest]

FWD: The Agricultural Dept poisons thousands of starlings " at request " of

only about two dozen farmers in a 4,000 pop. town...

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Hundreds of dead birds rain down on southern Illinois town

By Associated Press, 1/24/2002 18:44

<A HREF= " http:// " >

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/024/nation/Hundreds_of_dead_birds_rain_do:.sh

tml</A>

BREESE, Ill. (AP) It was like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie:

hundreds of dead birds sprawled across JoAnn Thole's lawn.

''I've got 117 pounds of dead birds I weighed them,'' Thole said as she

opened her garage, which she had made into a makeshift bird morgue. The

European starlings hadn't died of some mysterious disease. They were killed

by poison distributed by Agriculture Department at the request of local

farmers, who said the birds had been eating cattle

feed and causing other problems.

Kirk Gustad, director of the Agriculture Department's Wildlife

Services unit in Springfield, said the agency received about two dozen

requests from Illinois farmers to kill off the starlings.............