Skyway roadkill: Cats seemingly dropping from the sky onto Manila elevated highway

Motorists who use the Philippines’ Skyway, an elevated express tollway linking Manila’s southern suburbs to the central business district of Makati City have for some time observed flattened carcasses of cats littering the pavement. The baffling roadkill has raised the question of how the animals had somehow made their way onto the elevated structure.

A certain Imee Buela offers an interesting theory and used it as a basis to launch an anti animal cruelty petition on Change.org…

Every morning when I drive to work, I would often see flattened cats on Skyway ramps. What on earth were these cats doing on an elevated expressway? They just dropped from the sky?

It should not take rocket science to know the answer: some motorists left their unwanted cats or kittens on the elevated ramp, because this was the easiest way to get rid of their cats. Easy way to kill cats, but brutal.

Cats are supposed to be taken care of and loved, not killed that way.

It’s a bit of a consolation to see that the SOMCO people are quick in removing the carcass. But this doesn’t lessen a bit the disgust I feel against those people who commit this abominable act, this act of injustice against helpless animals. It’s not easy to wrap your head around the reason why these people would want to get rid of their cats that way.

But these criminals should not think they can forever do this with impunity. They should be held liable for the crime they committed.

It’s time that these people get what they deserve. It’s time to teach them a lesson. It’s time the Skyway management stop turning a blind eye on this disgusting practice. Besides, would SOMCO want the elevated expressway it manages become known as the Killing Fields of unwanted cats? This is perhaps the least of Skyway’s concerns. This is even perhaps a non-issue for them. But for people who care, this is a big issue and Skyway can do something about it.

Here are some suggestions:

1) Impose a penalty for motorists who intentionally abandon cats on the ramp. Skyway has CCTVs that they can use to catch the culprits.

2) Report it to PAWS. The act of abandoning an animal with the intention of killing it or resulting in the death of the animal is a violation against the Animal Welfare Act of 1998. PAWS may go after those criminals.

For some people maybe these are JUST cats. But for all responsible pet owners and pet lovers, these cats are family.

Worthy cause underpinned by a sound conclusion based on the evidence at hand? Filipino Netizens seem to agree. The petition has, as of this writing, attracted 1,059 supporters and is being endorsed (read retweeted) by a who’s-who of social media personalities.

Then again, animals falling-from-the-sky theory isn’t altogether implausible. Raining animals is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which flightless animals “rain” from the sky. Such occurrences have been reported in many countries throughout history. One hypothesis offered to explain this phenomenon is that strong winds traveling over water sometimes pick up creatures such as fish or frogs, and carry them for up to several miles. However, this primary aspect of the phenomenon has never been witnessed or scientifically tested.

In 2010, it reportedly rained fish in a remote Australian town…

Hundreds of spangled perch bombarded the 650 residents of Lajamanu, shocking local Christine Balmer, who was walking home when the strange ‘weather’ started.

She said: ‘These fish fell in their hundreds and hundreds all over the place. The locals were running around everywhere picking them up.

‘The fish were all alive when they hit the ground so they would have been alive when they were up there flying around the sky.

‘When I told my family, who live in another part of Australia, about the fish falling from the sky, they thought I’d lost the plot.

‘But no, I haven’t lost my marbles. All I can say is that I’m thankful that it didn’t rain crocodiles!’

What is really bizarre (though perhaps not by Philippine standards) is a public bus falling from the sky out of nowhere. Amazing as that idea may be, it actually did happen in the Philippines back in December 2013. The accident, which was caused by a Don Mariano Transit Corp bus falling from the Skyway killed 18 people.

Fact stranger than fiction? The truth is out there.

[NB: Parts of this article were lifted from the Wikipedia.org article “Raining animals” in a manner compliant to the terms stipulated in the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License that governs usage of content made available in this site.]

benign0

benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.