Is Religious Ritual Behind Piles of Decapitated Birds Showing Up on Las Vegas Streets?

Piles of beheaded chickens and pigeons and other birds have been found dumped on some Las Vegas streets lately, and it has people in the area concerned.

Image source: KLAS-TV

“The first time I saw it, it was a large rooster," Ryan Roskins, a street cleaner who's seen many other headless birds piles, told KLAS-TV in Las Vegas.

"Everything else is there, feet, feathers," he told the station. "It's just decapitated."

Roskins has a theory regarding the source of the decapitated birds.

"I actually think it must be voodoo," he told KLAS.

But a West African priest of the Ifa religion told the station that practitioners of Santeria or Ifa use animal sacrifices — e.g., chickens, pigeons or goats — to protect themselves or cleanse their bodies.

"They might be wiping themselves with the bird, letting the blood and then having to discard the body,” Ifa priest Duane Reece told KLAS.

Image source: KLAS-TV

He added that where the bird's body is dumped depends on what the spirit or deity is calling out for.

"Just like a first communion, just like a baptism, all of these ways are ways humans use to communicate," Reece added.

Image source: KLAS-TV

For Helen Arciaga, a thrift shop owner who cleans up the piles in the alley behind her store twice a month, enough is enough.

"Oh my good Lord it stinks," she told KLAS. "I'm sorry for what we saw today."

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(H/T: Drudge Report)