To curb vast flocks of sparrows from yearly eating one third of a country's food production, a nation organised Sparrow-Week. Both day and night, for seven days, the country's vast population rang bells, banged saucepan-lids and shouted. The sparrows, too frightened to settle, eventually fell dead out of the sky. Flight exhaustion from the same cause also killed gulls on the coast, herons in the marsh, eagles in the mountains and pigeons on the town square.
At the end of the seventh day, Sparrow-Week ended. The following year, two-thirds of the country's food supply was eaten by insects, and the money standard changed from gold to eggs.