‘A horror movie’: Dozens of dead geese scattered about Sacramento area after storm

By Maricela De La Cruz

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    SACRAMENTO, California (KCRA) — The deaths of dozens of geese in Sacramento are prompting California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials to investigate why they died.

The migratory birds were primarily cackling and snow geese and were found throughout the city and county Monday morning after an overnight thunderstorm.

Four of the birds were submitted to Fish and Wildlife for testing, and the department believes the birds died after falling to the ground during the storm.

“This event coincided with a pretty severe thunderstorm passing through the area on early Monday morning. It’s probably most likely that the birds were flying through the storm and the electrical activity in that storm possibly stunned the birds,” said Krysta Rogers, a senior environmental scientist with Fish and Wildlife.

Seeing all of those dead birds was unnerving for many like Adreana Alvarez and Fabian Sandoval, who saw it themselves.

Sandoval recalled Monday morning, dead geese on a stretch of Kenmar Road near Striker Avenue in the north Sacramento area.

Sacramento County officials told KCRA 3 that animal control officers picked up 37 dead geese in that location.

“I felt like it was the beginning of a horror movie. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is that movie ‘Birds,’ and it’s about to go down,'” Alvarez said.

Although rare, these kinds of events are not unheard of. Last winter, two similar weather events caused the deaths of many geese in the area.

“There’s just a lot of active migration right now and a lot of these birds do migrate at night,” Rogers said and added that there are still tests pending for a disease.

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