By Tim Binnall

Animal rescue workers in Las Vegas are both mystified and concerned following several sightings of pigeons inexplicably wearing tiny cowboy hats. The oddly clad birds were reportedly first spotted last Thursday by a resident named Robert Lee who managed to capture the strange scene on film. In an understandable turn of events given the pigeons' out-of-place attire, his video quickly went viral and soon caught the attention of an animal rescue organization in the city.

"At first, I was like, 'oh my god, that's cute,;" Mariah Hillman of the pigeon advocacy group Lofty Hopes told a local TV station, "then, I was like, 'wait a minute, how did they get those hats on there?'" She put forward the worrisome possibility that the tiny Stetsons were stuck to the birds' heads using glue and, in turn, wondered how this would impact their ability to fly as well as evade predators. Unfortunately, as Hillman was pondering those questions, more videos of similarly dressed birds in the city began to pop up online and it became clear that Las Vegas has something of a 'cowboy pigeon' crisis on its hands.

Despite the spate of sightings, none of the pigeons have been captured as of yet, so how they wound up wearing the cowboy hats in uncertain as is the ultimate question of who is responsible for what appears to be a rather cruel prank. For her part, Hillman and a team of volunteers have been scouring the city and "handing out business cards to any location where I saw pigeons and people," which is presumably quite a few places. Should anyone encounter one of the cowboy hat-wearing creatures, she encourages them to feed the birds and call her organization so that they can try to get to the bottom this bizarre mystery.