WTF! Gassy smell edition

Time for these, I guess...

Am I the only person who thinks it odd that on the same day a 'natural-gas odor' permeates Manhattan and extends all the way to New Jersey (odd enough in its own right!), downtown Austin, TX is evacuated because of dozens of unexplained bird deaths?

Both seem to be resolving themselves; New York is getting back to normal (although a lot of kids got a day off from school), and Austin should have reopened downtown by the time this is posted.  But seriously, wtf??  All quotes I've seen from public officials have followed the same basic pattern:

"We have no idea what this is.  But we know no one is in any danger."

Bloomberg even had the nerve to say this is "normal. It happens all the time."  WHAT?!  Manhattan is overcome with a gassy smell that requires building evacuations all the time???  Seriously, I'm not exactly filled with confidence when the best response we can get from leaders is that they have no idea, but are magically certain we're safe.

But the other thing that really has me concerned is that the MSM seems to be treating these as two separate incidents.  Sorry, but when two major cities have to evacuate areas on the same day because of "something" in the air - that's a very big deal, it ain't normal, and it seems connected. 

My thinking (get that tinfoil ready) is this: If someone wanted to release some airborne pathogen as a terrorist act, they might do a couple test runs, not big enough to do real damage, but big enough to cause a full response.  It just seems like a good way to draw out your opponent (assuming we're the opponent) and see what their capabilities and vulnerabilities are.  And as we've seen over the last four years, we're much better at panicking over false alarms than we are at identifying and preventing real attacks.

I hate to be Mr. Conspiracy about it, but birds dying in Texas and a gassy smell that covers miles of a metropolitan area - on the same day?  Seems highly unlikely to be a coincidence.  But maybe it's just my liberal blame-America-first mindset that causes me to see that we may be blowing off an actual terrorist threat today.