A Day of Rememberance became a day nobody would ever forget.

On 25 May 2009, citizens across the United States of America celebrated Memorial Day. For some, it was a day to remember the men and women who gave their lives in the service of their country. For others, it was a day to relax on the beach, or enjoy barbecues, or sit in traffic as they went to or from holiday destinations. Whatever their thoughts and intentions, however, nobody expected a grizzly-bear-sized snowy owl to stage a coast-to-coast campaign of mayhem and devastation on the holiday, which for many marks the unofficial start of Summer.

A Memorial Day dawn unlike any other in Washington DC

As Reveille sounded over Arlington National Cemetery, the silhouette of an enormous bird of prey appeared against the rising sun. As the giant owl buzzed the gate of Arlington Cemetery, sentinels fired at it, but their bullets proved ineffective. A jogger who observed the confrontation reported, 'Our guys lobbed enough lead at that thing to bring it down several times over, but it was like the bullets had no effect on it.' The owl did not attack the cemetery or anybody in the vacinity, however; it is unknown whether being fired at was a deterrent, or if the owl simply had other plans. Authorities reported no casualties.

The jogger said, 'I wouldn't be surprised if that owl didn't come back, though. I saw its eyes before it flew away, and I'll tell you what I saw there. Hatred. Pure unadulterated hatred. And evil.'

The grizzly-bear-sized owl was then observed flying east along the Potomac River, in the direction of the Chesapeake Bay.

Heavy holiday traffic is about to become the least of anyone's problems

As millions of vehicles streamed across the William Preston Lane, Jr. Memorial Bridge (informally known as the Bay Bridge) near Annapolis, Maryland, the grizzly-bear-sized owl was spotted perching on the westbound span, observing the cars as they rolled towards the popular beach resorts on Maryland's eastern shore and Delaware. Eyewitnesses boating on the Chesapeake Bay reported seeing the owl swoop down and seize cars, shaking the vacationers out of the vehicles as though they were salt granules in a salt shaker. He apparently then devoured some people in mid-air, and then went back to pick remaining survivors off the bridge.

Truck, or can of sardines?

Local news stations scrambled to get footage of the grizzly-bear-sized owl in action. One intrepid team captured a scene of the owl ripping the top off a Tyson foods delivery truck, which was packed with tons of poultry products intended for local supermarkets. Unphased at the thought of eating other birds, the owl devoured the entire contents of the truck, before flinging the empty shell of the truck at the news chopper.

A car is about to be taken on a completely unexpected spin

After destroying approximately six million vehicles and causing traffic delays that lasted well into Wednesday 27 May, the owl flew west along Interstate 80. As countless vacationers sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic along Interstate 80 heading from the Bonneville Salt Flats towards the Wasatch Mountains, the owl landed and proceeded to stomp on cars, fling them around, and devour the occupants. After puncturing the gas tanks of several cars which were flung into forests next to the road, the owl started a wildfire that continues to blaze out of control, and which has consumed approximately 2 billion acres of forest in Utah, Wyoming, and Kentucky. Amidst billowing smoke and flames that eyewitnesses described as 'hellish', the owl continued west along Interstate 80.

An angel of death emerges from the mist

As Memorial Day dawned bright and foggy over San Francisco, tens of millions of people went about their holiday plans. The Golden Gate Bridge was already jammed with travellers getting an early start on their day. In a devastating early morning attack, however, the grizzly-bear-sized snowy owl appeared through the mist and, an a scene all to familiar, began destroying vehicles and devouring their inhabitants, sometimes spitting them out into the San Francisco Bay.

Memorial Day smorgasbord

A member of the Golden Gate Bridge's board of directors said, "What's especially sad is that we recently approved funding to build a suicide barrier along the bridge. We wanted to save all those lives. Now what do we do? Put surface-to-air missiles on the towers? Like that is going to go over well with the voters here."

Berkeley resident 'John Doh' said, 'I can't believe nobody is concerned about the environmental implications of this attack. Today is Memorial Day -- the first day of Summer, culturally speaking. What the [expletive] is a snowy owl doing all the way down in San Francisco on Memorial Day? Shouldn't they be in the Arctic?'

A vacationing couple dressed in homespun hemp clothing agreed with Mr. Doh. The woman, a vaguely masculine looking man with heavy fuzzy-bear-caterpillar eyebrows and a sketchbook containing art that resembled the work of a spastic individual who had recently lost their dominant hand, said, 'I for one am glad to see that nature is fighting the industrial-capitalist complex that is posisoning the earth. I've always believed that nature can bend itself to make a political point, and this will show those [expletives] who say my pre-post-apocalyptic comic is crap.' The man, a shaggy-haired, unshaven individual, said, 'This proves that human civilization is unsustainable. Do you really think we'd have snowy owls coming to San Francisco if civilization wasn't actively killing and raping our planet? How stupid do you have to be to realize this is a sign from the land for us to rise up and smash the capitalist authorities?'

The man was interrupted when the grizzly-bear sized owl proceded to fly overhead and drop a Prius on top of him and his companion. Holiding the vehicle in its talons, the owl continued to smash the Prius on the two people until they were nothing but a vague reddish smear on the pavement.

It should have been the first day of the rest of their lives...

...but it turned out to be the last.

As millions of colleges and universities across the United States prepared for their springtime commencement ceremonies, the grizzly-bear-sized snowy owl that has been terrorizing the country was preparing for a feast of unparalleled magnitude. The owl seemed to know that tens of millions of graduate students were preparing to take their degrees around the middle of May, and as if guided by some hellish internal radar, he preyed upon scores of students.

One of the owl's first stops was the University of California, Berkeley. Family and friends of new graduates snapped several photos of the owl about to strike. He flew to various graduation ceremonies, where he quickly devoured over 92% of attendees. He also was observed to eat several faculty members.

Their big day is about to take a deadly turn

They didn't realize he wasn't just there for the photo op

One unidentified survivor who observed the owl as he devoured the bioengineering department said, "First I thought this couldn't be real. I thought it was either someone's experiment, or maybe just somebody in a big owl suit. But when it started to eat people then I realized it was actually a giant man-eating owl. It was the first time I saw anything like it."

A Berkeley resident, who refused to give his name, stated, "This is definitely the work of Dick Cheney. He probably engineered this thing to torture innocent civilians. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't have a whole fleet of these things somewhere in New Mexico."

A quick flyby before raining doom from above

Eyewitnesses reported mass chaos as the owl began his attack. One anonynous commentator said, "It is disheartening that these folks are supposed to be some of the top engineering students in the country, and nobody could throw together a bomb, or hell, even a sling shot to get this overgrown bag of feathers."

That's not confetti, it is blood.

The owl attacked approximately 780,000 other colleges and universities on the west coast, before flying east to Colorado. Witnesses reported sightings of the grizzly-bear-sized owl appearing over the Rocky Mountains before he flew to the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It was a strangely majestic sight," reported one survivor, "before the owl went straight for the Geology grads and started ripping them apart."

The owl proceeded to attack several hundred thousand more graduation ceremonies. Friends of a student at Ohio State University captured the following image of the owl's attack there.

Maybe they should have been trying to spell 'S.O.S.'

One survivor of the attack took the following photo of the owl about to devour members of the graduation procession en masse.

'It was like a diabolical buffet line'

Tragically, the owl's attacks, which killed between 3,186 and 237 million people nationwide, have decimated the graduate student population in the United States. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, "This probably means trouble for most key economic sectors in the future, because we've lost a lot of potentially productive researchers and workers. This also probably won't help the ratio of US to international grad students in our schools."

Not everyone was so pessimistic, however. Surviving student C. Sleigh said, "This probably will make it easy for me to win some of those competitive fellowships I keep losing out on. With only, what, a couple dozen grad students left, I'm pretty sure they'll have to fund me now." Unidentified individuals involved with one program Mr. Sleigh had previously applied to responded, "We consider it unlikely that we'll ever fund people who are such cowards that they hid under piles of their fellow students' corpses in order to avoid being killed by a big owl."

Lover's Lane: The Couples, the Cars...the Carnage

An alarming new development has taken place in the saga of destruction caused by a grizzly-bear-sized snowy owl.

Previously, all recorded attacks had been observed to take place on large gatherings of people, such as festivals, celebrations, or crowded areas. However, following the attacks on 5 May 2009 that left between 27 and 5,197 people dead, new evidence has come to light that the owl has begun attacking couples in or near cars on lovers' lanes across the United States.

Too wrapped up in each other to notice looming death...

The owl's first victims on what has been described as an attack on Lovers' Lanes across the nation were a Dr. B. Massengil of Columbus, Ohio, and Ms. J. Marshall, described by acquaintances as Dr. Massengil's 'trophy girlfriend'. The owl evidently tore the couple limb from limb, before crumpling up Dr. Massengil's new car 'like a tin can', according to witnesses.

The majesty and the hell of nature...

The owl was next sighted at Yosemite National Park, California. A photographer had paused to get a photograph of a romantic couple that had recently exited their car to admire the beautiful scenery, when he captured the moment that the grizzly-bear-sized raptor appeared from amidst the trees. The owl seized the couple in his talons and devoured them on the spot, before flinging their car into the valley below, where the gas tank exploded and started a wildfire that continues to rage out of control.

He paid to go all the way, but fate threw them a detour.

The owl then left the Yosemite National Park and flew to the Portland, Oregon, area, where he killed one Mr. F. Pooner, a student at Portland Community College, and one Ms. S. Pie, an actress and prostitute. The mangled, bloody corpses of Mr. Pooner and Ms. Pie were found inside the car, which, paradoxically, was not damaged in the attack, initially leading authorities to believe that the owl could not have been responsible. Photographic evidence, however, conclusively demonstrates that the owl was, in fact, the culprit.

A marriage about to end before it really started

A Mr. S. C. Colburt and his new bride were among the last known victims. Fresh from a beachside wedding in southern California, in which Mr. Colburt was reputed to have worn a shirt that was not tucked into his trousers, the newlyweds stopped along Interstate 5 en route to Mexico to revel in the romance of the moment. Eyewitnesses reported that they never saw the grizzly-bear-sized owl land next to their car. Evidently the owl was able to bite off both their heads in one bite due to the proximity of their faces.

In total, between ten and 2,871 people have been killed in the recent attacks on couples in cars. Authorities across the nation are urging couples planning to visit lovers' lanes to exercise due caution and be alert for the possibility of an attack from the deadly predator.

Cinco de Mayo turned out to be more like Day of the Dead

For some, it was supposed to be a day to celebrate their heritage. For others, it was a chance to drink copious amounts of Corona. Whatever their perspective, however, nobody in the Denver or Iowa City areas got up on May 5th and expected a grizzly-bear-sized snowy owl to wreak havoc on Cinco de Mayo festivities.

Brushed by the icy wings of death

In what was described by witnesses as 'an impressive manoeuvre', the owl made his entrance by flying between some folk dancers, executing a barrel roll and devouring between one and 285 people. The owl then perched momentarily on the State Capitol building, before smashing the dome in his talons.

Fiesta... of doom!

The owl then flew to the nearby festival site, where he began plucking people from the crowd and eating them 'like they were grapes on a stem', according to a witness who was not present at the scene. Apparently, at one point he seized a tent pole in his talons and skewered several people 'like they were on a shish kebab' according to the same witness.

Last orders...

The owl concluded his day of destruction in Iowa City, Iowa, where he devoured an entire group of University of Iowa students enjoying a Cinco de Mayo Pub Crawl. An unidentified survior recalled, 'We were leaving this one bar. I was the last person out of the bar, because I had left my cell phone in the men's room. I went back for it, but got lost on my way out and thought I better buy another Corona. Then I realized they had forgotten the lime, so I decided to go back, but the bartender misunderstood me and thought I said I didn't want a Corona, I wanted a Bud Light Lime. So he took my Corona and gave me a Bud Light Lime, but I didn't realize it until I was almost at the door. So I stopped and wondered whether I should go back and ditch the Bud Light Lime and get a Corona, because Bud Light Lime is kind of a pussy drink, and I knew that the whole pub crawl society would make fun of me. But then I decided I could handle it, because the Bud Light Lime was pretty good for something that tasted basically like Sprite with some hops. That's when I saw this giant owl attacking them. There was blood and guts and bones everywhere. First I thought I had underestimated the strength of Bud Light Lime, but then I realized that no, this was actually happening.'

Tragically, the students' matching shirts, cheap plastic jewelry, and drunken behavior may have led the owl to mistakenly believe that they were lemmings rather than humans. University of Iowa spokespeople are encouraging students to refrain from group activities, other than sporting events, where they dress and act alike.

Stand on the right, walk on the left...or die

The giant snowy owl that wreaked havoc on Washington DC during the annual Cherry Blossom Festival has returned to the capital of the United States to cause further mayhem and destruction. This week, the grizzly-bear-sized owl was observed attacking tourists and commuters in Washington's Metro system.

It is believed that the first targets of the attack were known as escalefters: people who disregard the common etiquette of standing on the right and walking on the left of the escalators in the metro stations.

By standing on the left, the escalefters in question blocked the flow of pedestrian traffic when the first attack came, at the north entrance to the Dupont Circle metro station. The owl was able to seize stationary pedestrians in both talons as a result of the escaleftors' actions.

Maybe 'Run for your lives' should have been the motto, instead of 'Stand right, walk left'

After devouring a number of people at the Dupont Circle location, the owl proceeded to fly south towards the National Mall, where he proceeded to stage a second attack on pedestrians on the Smithsonian station.

Their vacation is about to get a lot worse

While the death toll at the Dupont Circle station was estimated to be between one and 12, an estimated seven to 493 people were killed at the Smithsonian station, when a tourist steadfastly refused to start walking/running and trapped scores of people on the slow-moving stairs. Traumatised witnesses, including a group of young students visiting Washington for a school trip, described people being torn limb from limb by the grizzly-bear-sized owl.

Paradoxically, the death tolls were inversely proportional to the respective lengths of the escalators: approximately 200 feet (61 m) at Dupont Circle versus approximately 50 feet (15.2 m) at the Smithsonian.

The incident demonstrates the importance of observing proper etiquette while using public transportation. A Park Police Officer stationed nearby on the National Mall commented, 'What's tragic is this whole mess could have been avoided if one person had only walked on the left like people normally do But because someone thought it was more important to be goofing off with her friends, those people were trapped like fish in a barrel.' The tourist responsible for blocking the left of the escalator at the Smithstonian station was identified as one Ms S. Huggins. Survivors and next-of-kin of those killed have begun legal action against the estate of Ms Huggins.

After the attack on the Smithsonian, the owl circled the Washington monument, then proceeded to fly into the Metro station, where he was observed to board an Orange Line train in the direction of Vienna, Virginia. He then exited at Metro Center, a transfer point for the Orange, Blue, and Red lines, where he killed between five and 148 people.

The owl was last observed flying down one of the tunnels, but a subsequent search has yielded no sign of the gigantic raptor. The current whereabouts of the owl remain unknown. Despite repeated requests for further information about the owl's location from members of the media and members of Ms Huggins's party, weary Metro security spokesmen were forced to repeat continuously that they really, seriously have no clue about where the owl is, but they will update the Washington DC metro website as soon as they have any reliable information.