WaPo Unhinged - July 4th Fireworks Celebrations Are Now Horrible "Bird Murdering" Affairs

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Fireworks are America’s favorite face exploding, dog torturing, bird murdering way to celebrate its birthday
By Caitlin Gibson
July 1, 2019

It’s almost the Fourth of July, the quintessential American holiday, and because nothing says America! quite like exploding things, it is the holiday of fireworks: glittering bursts over the town square, sparklers in the backyard, roman candles by the lake. It’s all fine, patriotic fun — unless you’re an emergency room doctor, or the parent of an easily awakened child, or the owner of an anxious dog, or a firefighter, or a bird, or the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which gathers a bunch of government officials, fireworks safety experts and volunteers on the Mall every year for what is surely the most morbid event to ever feature exploding watermelons.
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That being said, fireworks are actually kind of terrible.

They are certainly terrible when they go wrong, which is often: Last year, 9,100 people wound up in U.S. hospital ­emergency rooms with fireworks-related injuries. More than a third of them were children under age 15, and the majority of accidents occurred during the month surrounding July 4, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“What do we see on the Fourth of July? Oh, we see all of the body parts that can be damaged by an explosive,” . . .
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But fireworks are still kind of terrible when they go right.


Just ask the residents of Beebe, Ark., who in the waning hours of 2010 were suddenly bombarded with the carcasses of 5,000 red-winged blackbirds, apparently so spooked by New Year’s Eve fireworks that they had collided with anything in their path as they fled their roost.

Or ask Suzanne West, executive director of the Sarvey Wildlife Care Center in Washington state, who reminds us that it’s not just birds, but a vast assortment of woodland creatures — rabbits, squirrels, foxes — who are endangered by the thunderous noise and falling embers. For the past three years, she’s received calls around the Fourth of July about bald eagle babies who panicked and flopped out of their nests because of fireworks.

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