Sparrow's death sets off a domino effect

LONDON — In what might be the ultimate domino effect, the fall of a single sparrow has created outrage across Europe.

It all started after a group of employees at reality TV company Endemol had spent weeks painstakingly assembling more than 4 million dominos in an effort to beat the world record for domino toppling.

But then a tiny bird came calling.

A house sparrow flew through an exhibition hall window in the northern city of Leeuwarden on Nov. 14 and accidentally knocked over 23,000 of the carefully placed dominos.

Organizers said 750 safeguards had been installed in the domino setup to limit the effect of such accidents. But after TV company employees failed to catch the bird, they called in an animal control expert who cornered the sparrow and killed it with an air gun.

The reaction was immediate and furious. House sparrows are common in the Netherlands, but because their numbers have declined rapidly in recent years they are listed as an endangered species.

"Animal protection organizations both here in the Netherlands and in Germany have filed official complaints," said Joanna Swabe, a policy adviser at the Dutch animal rights group Bont voor Dieren. "It is completely preposterous to terminate an animal's life for such a trivial reason as a domino contest."

An investigation into whether it was illegal to kill the sparrow was begun by the Dutch province of Friesland, but the uproar continued.

A Dutch radio DJ offered a reward of about $3,500 to anyone who could topple the dominoes before the event. The company that employs the animal control expert told police that he had received a death threat.

A Dutch-language song, "De Domino Mus" or "The Domino Sparrow" — was recorded by staff of the station Radio Eenhoorn and went on sale there last week.

The outrage wasn't confined to the Netherlands. A Dutch Web site — www.dodemus.nl — created to pay tribute to the so-called "Domino D-Day Sparrow" has posted condolences from mourners around the world.

One said: "Tiny bird, tiny bird. May the image of you cowering in the corner haunt the organizers of the domino event forever."

In Germany, a conservation group complained to the German TV station that was rebroadcasting the domino event.

A column in Britain's Guardian newspaper remarked that the bird's murder was a clear sign that overreaction has become the norm.

"If you have a clear and decisive vision of how the world should be, you can't be expected to tolerate things that don't fit in," wrote Rebecca Front. "At one end of the scale this means shooting a sparrow because it spoiled your display; at the other it means blowing up people on buses, or invading countries, because you don't like their regimes."

Endemol said that after the killing, it went on to knock down 4,155,476 dominos in the Nov. 18 live broadcast, beating an earlier record of 3,992,397 set last year and approved by Guinness World Records.

But three days later, the company adjusted the record total to 4,002,146 dominos. A legal expert called in to examine the footage ruled that one of the people behind the record-breaking bid had "illegally" caused 153,340 of the bricks to fall over — many times the number for which the sparrow died.