It was a bright, sunshiney day on March 3, 1876 in Bath County, Kentucky. The sky was perfectly clear. Mrs. Crouch was making soap in her back yard. Suddenly, all around her, flakes fell into the yard.
These were not your ordinary snowflakes. For one thing, they were large--from two to four inches on a side. For another, they were not composed of ice. Instead, they appeared to be hunks of meat. Fresh meat, at that. Two unidentified men (and brave ones at that) sampled the chunks and indicated that they were "gamey" like venison or mutton.
Learned guys were curious about the phenomenon and investigated. Leopold Brandeis (whoever that was) claimed that it was merely bacterial growths that quickly formed on the ground in the presence of rain. Gainsayers pointed out that there was no rain and that witnesses saw the flakes fall from the sky.
Examination of the materials by histologists revealed both lung tissue and muscle fibers.
Finally, Dr. L.D. Kastenbine, MD, Professor of Chemistry at Louisville College of Pharmacy, with the assistance of a grizzled old Ohio farmer (well, we don't know for sure that he was grizzled, but most old farmers back then were) came up with a conclusion consistent with the facts. The area in question was populated by turkey vultures and black vultures--both who can fly so high that they cannot be spotted from the ground with the naked eye. These species have a tendency to engage in projectile vomiting (considering what they eat, who can blame them). They are also sympathetic pukers, where if one vulture vomits, all of his companions will do so otherwise. Although the sands of time have erased the original provocation for the first vulture's gastric distress, it appears likely that the infamous Kentucky meat shower was because of a bunch of bulimic buzzards of Bath.
To read Dr. Kastenbine's learned treatise on this issue, click here.
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