How quickly fortunes change. On Tuesday in Urumqi, a blast of lightning struck and killed 173 sheep, inflicting up to 200,000 yuan of economic loss for the owners. (Technically, 143 died instantly, 30 more were swept away by rains.) This story comes on the heels of another sorry tale of lightning mishap: on July 6, a bolt found its way into a pigsty, electrocuting all 53 pigs inside.
“There was a streak of lightning in the sky, the mountain was flooded with a torrential downpour, accompanied by screams,” photographer Qu Jingshui, who was on the scene, told People’s Daily Online. “Intuition told me something was ripped open by lightning. I got on a vehicle and advanced, saw not far away, under a tree, a sheet of sheep carcasses, most of them still bleeding, with vestiges of burns, so much so that there was a charred smell.”
We get that Mother Nature is indomitable and deserves our fear and respect, but does she have to be such a bitch?
That photographer guy must be pretty intuitive to make that call.