Imagine this: It’s March 3, 1876. Ulysses S. Grant is the president. Ten days ago, John Hopkins University opened its doors for the first time. In less than a week, Alexander Graham Bell will patent his novel invention, the telephone.
However, all of these events seem somewhat far away from you and your life on a farm in rural Kentucky. On this particular Friday, your priority is making a batch of soap. As you start preparing it in your garden, everything is going according to plan. According to plan, that is, until chunks of flesh start raining down from the clear sky. Seemingly out of nowhere, a torrential downpour of raw meat comes out of the clouds, in a way that you can only describe as being akin to “large snowflakes”. You run for cover into your house, abandoning your soap.
That’s the story of poor Mary Crouch, a farmer’s wife in Bath County, Kentucky, and the only witness to the bizarre historical event known as the “Kentucky Meat Shower.” Lasting for just a couple minutes, pieces of raw meat ranging in size fell from the sky, scattering all across the property of Mary and her husband, Allan Crouch.
The event was quite a spectacle. Neighbors crowded to witness the aftereffect of the strange phenomenon. They reported that the meat was very fresh, and said the largest pieces measured three to four inches square. Two men even ate it. Yes, they did indeed pick up the mysterious meat off of the ground and sample it. Was it a wise choice to make? Most definitely not. But interestingly, they reported that its taste was the closest to that of mutton or venison.
Locals weren’t the only ones interested in the flesh-covered farm. People across the country made their own observations and speculations about what had occurred. There were many theories floating around about the cause. One highlight has to be humorist William Livingston Alden’s belief that a meteor shower was the cause, published in a New York Times article on March 11. He jokingly proposed that since meteor showers were caused by exploding planets, this one must have been caused by alien livestock exploding.
Of course, actual scientists became involved as well. After testing the meat, doctors concluded that it was cartilage, lung, and muscle tissue. A little later, an article for the Louisville Medical News written by Dr L.D. Kastenbine outlined the most widely agreed upon cause of the meat shower today: vulture vomit.
If vultures need to defend themselves or just need to lighten up in order to fly, they will disgorge their meals. Two species of vulture in Kentucky are known to do this. Kastenbine believed that if a flock of vultures had been flying high enough and all disgorged their food at once, wind could have picked up their stomach contents and spread them across the Crouch’s farm, resulting in the nastiest kind of weather event possible. While this is the most plausible theory, it’s still far from being a concrete explanation.
So there’s no way to ever prove exactly what went down on the Crouch’s farm. But hey, if you really want to see the evidence for yourself, consider making a trip down to the University of Transylvania, where a piece of the meat is preserved in all its glory at the Monroe Moosnick Medical and Science Museum.
This year, we celebrate the 148th anniversary of the Kentucky Meat Shower. A peculiar and slightly repulsive event, the mystery surrounding its origin just contributes to the wild historical tale. It may not exactly be textbook worthy, but it’s worth a whole lot in the hearts of lovers of the peculiar everywhere.
Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/books/review/the-unidentified-colin-dickey.html
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/history/2019/10/25/kentucky-meat-shower-meat-
fell-sky-bath-county-olympian-springs/4082953002/
https://www.wowktv.com/news/kentucky/1876-kentucky-meat-shower-the-day-meat-fell-from-
the-sky-in-the-bluegrass-state/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Kentucky%20Historical
%20Society%2C%20a%20piece%20of%20the,Copyright%202024%20Nexstar%20Media
%20Inc.
https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/What-Was-the-Kentucky-Meat-Shower