According to multiple contemporary accounts, the meat shower occurred around 11:00 AM on a Friday morning. The sky was clear. There was no storm, no aircraft (which didn't exist yet), no obvious source. Mrs. Allen Crouch was making soap in her farmyard when meat began falling around her.

The pieces varied in size from flakes to chunks up to four inches square. They were described as fresh - not spoiled or dried. The fall lasted several minutes and covered a strip of ground about 100 yards by 50 yards. Neighbors confirmed the event. Several people tasted the meat; two gentlemen who did so reported it had the flavor of mutton or venison.

Samples of the fallen meat were collected and examined by scientists at the time. Leopold Brandeis, a German pharmacist and amateur scientist, identified the tissue as lung tissue from a horse or human infant. Other samples appeared to be muscle, cartilage, and fat.

Dr. A. Mead Edwards of the Newark Scientific Association examined samples and suggested they were animal tissue, possibly lung or muscle. The variety of tissue types suggested that whatever had fallen was not from a single source or a single animal. The analysis raised more questions than it answered.

The most commonly accepted explanation involves vultures. Vultures are known to regurgitate their stomach contents when startled or when they need to become lighter to escape a threat. A group of vultures flying at high altitude, invisible to observers below, might have vomited in unison, their stomach contents dispersing as they fell.

The vulture theory explains the variety of tissue types (vultures eat entire carcasses) and the freshness (recently consumed). Critics note that no vultures were seen and that the meat fell over a defined area for several minutes - behavior inconsistent with a single regurgitation event.

Other theories ranged from the mundane to the bizarre. Some suggested a whirlwind had picked up offal from a slaughterhouse and deposited it miles away. Others proposed that the meat was a type of nostoc - a cyanobacteria that forms gelatinous masses sometimes called 'star jelly' and occasionally mistaken for extraterrestrial material.

The nostoc theory was rejected by scientists who examined the tissue - it was clearly animal flesh, not bacterial colonies. Some paranormal enthusiasts proposed extraterrestrial origins. No explanation has ever gained universal acceptance.

The Kentucky Meat Shower became a minor sensation. Scientific American reported on it. Local newspapers covered it for weeks. Professor J. Lawrence Smith of Louisville preserved samples in glycerine. Some of those samples reportedly survived into the 20th century.

The incident remains a genuine mystery. Something fell from the sky. It was meat. No one knows where it came from. The vulture theory is probably correct, but it has never been proven. The Kentucky Meat Shower stands as a reminder that unexplained phenomena don't require supernatural causes - sometimes the natural world is strange enough on its own.