The! Biggest! News! of! the! Day! - Not Earnings from Apple, Merrill Lynch or Harley-Davidson

Here are some of the contenders for today's biggest...news...of...the...day...

• Better-than-expected earnings, but lackluster guidance, from Apple (APPL)...
• Better-than-expected earnings, and a dividend boost, from Merrill Lynch (MER)...the broker earned 2.41 a share, besting First Call estimates of 1.92...Merrill is also hiking its quarterly dividend by 40 percent...
• Housing data that shows "surprising strength"...
• Better-than-expected earnings from Harley-Davidson (HOG)...
• Some slightly upbeat comments (relative to what has been seen recently) on the housing sector as it is said - "Maybe 2007 won't be such a bad year for homebuilders after all"...

While those are all stories worth watching, I think it is obviously clear that the biggest story is this - Birds may have sparked W.Va. office fire...according to the article - "Fire Capt. David Bias said a pigeon or another kind of bird may have carried a smoldering cigarette into the Ratcliff Place on Jan. 10"...

In and-of-itself this article seems innocent enough, but consider this truly chilling question - could the bird be aligning themselves with the pigs?!?!?! Could we be facing a multi-species uprising?