9/11 Tribute Dangerous To Birds, Study Says

                Every September 11^th, twin blue beams rise from lower Manhattan and climb towards the heavens, in solemn yet stirring tribute to those killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks. This near-sacred, one-day-a-year observance of those lost in the worst foreign attack on American soil in the nation’s long history may be in jeopardy if the authors of a recently published study are heeded.

                The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (look for the centerfold!), examined seven years of the annual tributes at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and concluded that the lights are a potentially fatal attraction to migrating birds. Not outside the realm of possibility, but what is undeniably true is that the twin towers so honored were demonstrably a fatal attraction to Islamic terrorists…and their roughly 3,000 victims.

                Study researchers claim that thousands of birds were drawn to the lights, causing them to waste precious energy circling and risking collisions with buildings or capture by predators. Well, those in Manhattan are certainly familiar with objects in flight colliding with buildings. Oh, and are these birds risking “capture” by airborne predators? If so, why are these predators not at risk because of the lights? Or are they and we just don’t care about them? Could we negotiate for the “captured” birds release?

                The study’s authors recommend that the memorial’s twin blue beams be forever dimmed, and that bright lights around homes, stadiums, offshore oil rigs, and construction sites be turned off during migration season.

                There’s no circling around the fact that, if authorities implement these researcher’s recommendations, our world will be a little darker.

                And, any way you look at it, that decision would be for the birds.