To go with rebl_rn’s bizarre headlines, here’s a bizarre news story:
Updated: 02:05 PM EST
Drunk Birds Crash Into Building’s Glass
COLUMBIA, S.C. (Feb. 10) - Dozens of birds, drunk from eating holly berries, crashed into the glass of an office building and died earlier this week.
“It was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie,” worker Denise Wilkinson said. “It was spooky. You could hear them where they flew into the glass.”
Warm weather and an ample supply of berries attracted hundreds of cedar waxwings into the enclosed courtyard of the three-story building Tuesday,
The birds began getting drunk on the berries. They got so loopy that some were falling off branches and others were slamming into the glass walls that enclose the courtyard, said Burgess Mills, the building’s owner.
About half of the 100 birds that slammed into the building died, workers said.
Groundskeepers have tried to help the birds by putting tape on windows or nets over the holly trees to keep them from eating the berries, Mills said.
02/10/05 17:26 EST
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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Poor birdies. 
It is really sad that the poor things died, but at the same time, can you imagine intoxicated birds falling off the trees? 
When I was a kid, there was an undeveloped area near my neighborhood. Berries grew wild there, and in the right season birds would get loaded on fermented berries and do the same things that loaded people do: stagger around, fall off their perch, etc. I could just reach down and pick one up on occasion. Intoxication is not just for humans, you know…
Roger
The veracity of this report is in some doubt. We’ve been debating it at work (an avian vet practice with two board cert vets), and we’re much more likely to believe that it is a fungal or bacterial toxicity, rather than alcohol.
Has anyone tested the alcohol content of the berries? or the BAL of the birds? Is the current weather in SC, and the sugar content of the berries likely to allow fermentation of berries on the bush?
Just some things to think about.
It’s a strange world we live in.
Whatever the cause of the intoxication, the birds that I saw kept coming back for it. I witnessed the phenomenon several times over many years, and it was definitely seasonal although the conditions probably did not occur every year. Whatever getting high does to the procreative potential of the individual birds, some of them obviously enjoyed it and came back for more.
On an incongruously serious note, voluntary animal intoxication which is documented in many species blows the “moral failure” theory of intoxication and addiction out of the water.
Roger