Virginia authorities are asking a vertical version of the question, why did the chicken cross the road? Investigators are looking into a report that someone saw a piece of uncooked poultry fall from the sky and plunk a teenager on the head.
The Department of Environmental Quality will likely focus its investigation on the possibility that someone plucked the chicken from an improperly maintained compost pile, spokesman William Hayden said Thursday.
An avian expert said seagulls flying high in the sky, and out of sight to those below, probably dropped the chicken parts.
Some had speculated that vultures were the culprit. “I doubt it would be vultures because they don’t typically carry things and they don’t regurgitate in the air,” Bryan D. Watts, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary, told The Daily Times.
Scientists who have monitored gull colonies on the Eastern Shore have found chicken bones, he said. Cassie Bernard was horseback riding Wednesday when the 1-foot piece of processed chicken hit her on the head. Other riders saw several more poultry parts fall from the sky.
Bernard was wearing a helmet and did not get injured. Milton Johnston of DEQ’s Tidewater office said the nearby farm probably spread the parts more than a nearby chicken plant.
“We can’t have pieces of chicken falling out of the sky,” he said. Officials from a nearby Tyson Foods Inc. processing plant denied that the flying chicken parts originated there.
Hayden said farmers typically use chicken parts from processing plants for their fields. He said the investigation will focus on whether the farms are properly composting the parts.
Content contributed by staff member, reported from Accomac, Virginia, USA, sourced by The Daily Times
