BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Nearly two dozen birds are dead in Brevard County, and we may never know why.
- 13 laughing gulls found dead in Port Canaveral, 9 seriously injured
- Wild Florida Rescue: injuries to 9 birds so severe, they had to be put down
- Wild Florida Rescue also hope FWC will investigate
- Get more Brevard County coverage
It's a Halloween week mystery that could have come out of a Hitchcock movie.
The team at Melbourne's Wild Florida Rescue got a call late Saturday night while at their annual Halloween party.
The Brevard Sheriff's Office deputies were at a sad scene on Mullet Road in Port Canaveral.
"When we got there we were shocked, there were gulls scattered straight down the road," Heather Pepe with Wild Florida Rescue told Spectrum News 13.
Of the 22 laughing gulls found, 13 of them were dead, and nine of them were seriously hurt.
"Their wings were broken right off, torn off, compound open fractures," Pepe said. "So bizarre. It was very eerie for us."
But what happened?
Theories are abound — did the gulls strike the large overhead power lines? Were they hit by a car?
Unfortunately for the Sheriff's Office, they don't have much to go on. A check of surveillance video from area businesses turned up nothing.
For the wildlife rescuers, this time of year only made for a magnified mystery.
"We were all in costumes, and Halloween, and there are these gulls nobody knows what's happened to them," Pepe said.
Wild Florida Rescue took the nine surviving seagulls to a local wildlife hospital, but unfortunately the birds’ injuries were too severe, and they had to be put down.
They hope Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will investigate, even performing necropsies to try and determine cause of death.