Sometimes the books you’re reading intersect strangely with the headlines. Today, it happened on two counts.

Last night I began reading The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco, Marilyn Chase’s account of how rats brought the plague to San Francisco in 1900. The first clue that something was amiss was the sudden appearance of rat corpses all over Chinatown. After one Chinatown resident died a rather horrific and sudden death, the 12 blocks that constituted Chinatown were cordoned off, allowing no one out.

Today: Austin, TX officials had to close off a main downtown road after discovering “about 60 dead pigeons, sparrows, and gackles.” There was a West Nile Virus scare in Austin back in 2002. Rats, pigeons–take your pick–either way it looks like something out of the ickier parts of Exodus. Meanwhile, the AP reports on “a mysterious gas-like odor Monday that wafted over Manhattan and parts of New Jersey and led to some building evacuations and mass transit disruptions.”

Also in the news today, the 40-year-old daughter of Angie Dickinson and Burt Bacharach, Nickie Dickinson, has committed suicide. Nicki suffered from Asperger’s Disorder, a form of autism. Paul Collins delves a bit into Asberger’s in the wonderful book I just finished reading, Not Even Wrong: A Father’s Journey into the Lost History of Autism.