Buzzards Foil Body Farm

Plans to create a "body farm" in Texas have suffered a setback. It seems the planned site was fairly close to the local municipal airport. Officials were extremely worried that the body farm would attract buzzards and increase risks to airplanes. (In case you aren't familiar with the term body farm, it is a place where human bodies are left outside to decompose. This is to study the forensics of dead bodies, not some weird scheme to grow something. Although we could have a lot of fun with a phrase like this.)

Texas State University in San Marcos, 175 miles (280 km) west of Houston, has been looking for sites for a forensic research facility for months, but has run into opposition from residents, and now, the local airport.

Vultures, known locally as buzzards, are large birds native to the state that eat carrion. They circle around in the sky, often in groups, when dead meat is spotted.

"There's a lot of people who don't want it their backyard, and that's certainly understandable," Mark Hendricks, a university spokesman, said on Thursday. "It's a controversial project, there's no doubt about it."

He said the body farm would have six to nine bodies at any given time, in various states of decomposition.

Some would be partially buried, and others might be left on the ground under cages to protect them from vultures, Hendricks said.

Texas State University decided not to use the site near the municipal airport after officials expressed concern that buzzards attracted to decomposing bodies might strike incoming or outgoing airplanes, Hendricks said. University officials said they would look for other possible sites for the project.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have noted that the Germans appear to have come up with a solution to Texas' problem: Indoor body gardening.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The decomposed corpse of a German man was found alone in his bed after nearly seven years, police in the western city of Essen said Thursday.

The police said in a statement the man was 59 and unemployed at the time of his death. He most likely died of natural causes on November 30, 2000, the date he received a letter from the Welfare Office found in the apartment, police said.

Next to the dead man's bed police found cigarettes, an open television guide and Deutschemark coins, which came out of circulation after the euro was introduced in 2002.

Kind of a grim harvest. The man was never reported missing and apparently was never noticed by the neighbors.

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  By Sam L., Friday, 11 May , 2007 @ 1:48 pm

  A guy has to wonder about where one might live that doesn’t think 7 year’s worth of unpaid bills (water/gas/electricity/phone/etc.) is worth looking into. Not to mention taxes, maybe a car license. Presumably he owned a house, otherwise the landlord might have wanted the rent.

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  By Purple Avenger, Friday, 11 May , 2007 @ 2:52 pm

  Rather amazing that burglars hadn’t found the place and looted it first.

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1. Blue Crab Boulevard » 3 Bedrooms, 2 Baths, Nice View, Free Corpse — Tuesday, 15 May , 2007 @ 5:33 am