It's raining Wrens.

The other day I stumbled on a story related to all those birds dropping dead last month and it turned out that apparently, some of them were killed intentionally.

Here's an excerpt:

"Not all the mysterious bird die-offs that have been witnessed around the globe recently are due to unexplained causes. A recent mass die-off event witnessed in Yankton, South Dakota was traced back to the USDA which admitted to carrying out a mass poisoning of the birds.

After hundreds of starlings were found dead in the Yankton Riverside Park, concerned citizens began to investigate. Before long, a USDA official called the local police and admitted they had poisoned the birds. "They say that they had poisoned the birds about ten miles south of Yankton and they were surprised they came to Yankton like they did and died in our park," says Yankton Animal Control Officer Lisa Brasel, as reported by KTIV.

The USDA then confirmed the story and explained it was all "part of a large killing" in Nebraska. Some of the birds that ate the poison apparently flew all the way to Yankton before succumbing to the poison.

According to the report, the USDA has killed more than four million birds over the last several years. There's even an official spreadsheet here from 2009.

Here's a few examples on the spreadsheet that caught my eye:

96,000 feral pigeons. Feral pigeons? Holy shit, those sound pretty dangerous. It's probably good that they are taking those things out.

1,259,714 european starlings. That right there is a whole lot of birds. The USDA must really hate europeans for some reason. The really odd part is that each animal has a few different categories, and two of them are Intentional and Unintentional. For instance, the starling breakdown looks like this:

Intentional Unintentional

1,259,714 2

So somewhere a conversation like this took place:

"Hey, how many starlings did we kill? Was it 1,259,714? "

"Yeah. Oh, and those two that Steve ran over with his SUV. Don't forget those."

I'd also like to know how they got such specific numbers. Who's the poor bastard who gets the job of counting up all the dead birds? "One... two... three... four...wow, this job really sucks... five... six... seven..."

Then like 14 hour later, "8,764...no wait...765? Crap, now I have to start over."

In other news, there's a group of feminist activists in Kiev, Ukraine. Femen's leader, 26-year-old Anna Gutsol, explains: "Our goal is active Ukrainian women who want to be involved in society and politics."

To me, that doesn't really sound like a traditional goal, per se, because saying your goal is "active Ukrainian women" makes you sound like someone who posts personal ads on Craigslist. But lack of effective mission statement aside, their main claim to fame is that they apparently do all their protesting topless.

Their official slogan is "Our God is woman, our mission is protest, our weapons are bare breasts."

Far be it from me to question their choice of weapons, but here is a short list of things bare breasts cannot generally do:

1. Shoot holes in stuff.

2. Protect your home.

3. Kill from a distance.

4. Kill.

You'll note that I said generally do, and that's only because I'm aware of this.