Tens of thousands of birds invade Oldham County Neighborhood

LA GRANGE, KY (WAVE) – One Oldham County Neighborhood is dealing with an overcrowding problem, you have to see to believe.

"I've really never seen anything like it," said Kelly Powers, who lives in an apartment off of Jericho Road. "I was scared. The first time, I didn't know what was happening."

Every day just before the sun sets, Darlene and Billy Armes are ready for battle, shooting off a canon in hopes of scaring away some unwanted visitors.

While this cannon shoots nothing but sound, they hope it will fix a problem their Oldham County neighborhood has been fighting since November. Like clockwork, twice a day, tens of thousands of birds swarm a small wooded area in La Grange.

"It's like a cloud of birds, but a giant cloud," said Powers. "The whole sky will fill up with black birds."

Armes says she first contacted city officials for answers, but ended up talking with someone from the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, who provided her with the canons.

"Our neighbor is doing the one cannon in our subdivision and then we've come down the road and are taking care of this," said Armes.

With all of these birds, comes quite a mess. "When it comes down it sounds like rain coming down," said Powers. "I mean literally from inside our apartment you think it is raining outside."

With the extra bacteria in the air, many neighbors are questioning their health. "The other kids in the neighborhood have been getting sick," said Kelly Strausbaugh. "We are all dealing with respiratory upper infections. I don't really know for sure if we can blame it on the birds, but I feel like it is all the birds' fault. All of these problems came when the birds came."

So they're all hoping sometime soon, these birds will fly home, to a place that's far away from theirs. "When I have a mission, I'm going to go for it," said Armes.

There is still not a clear answer, why the birds have chosen this particular location. The Armes tell us they plan to continue to shoot off their cannon until another solution comes along.

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