Headless birds on Las Vegas streets part of satanic ritual?

LAS VEGAS - Piles of beheaded birds are showing up on certain streets in Las Vegas, reports CBS affiliate KLAS.

Residents and business owners on the city's east side are disgusted by what they have seen. Helen Arciaga, who owns a thrift shop in the neighborhood, told the station that she has found several dead birds, mostly pigeons and chickens, in an alley behind her store.

"Where did this come from?" she asked aloud while showing a KLAS reporter the various dead birds located in the alley behind her store. "Oh my good Lord, it stinks."

"The first time... it was a large rooster," street cleaner Ryan Roskins told the station. "Everything else is there - feet, feathers. It's just decapitated.... I actually think it must be voodoo."

Speaking with KLAS, a West African priest said people practicing the religion of Santeria or Ifa use animal sacrifices like chickens, pigeons or goats to cleanse the body.

"They might be wiping themselves with the bird, letting the blood and then having to discard the body," said Ifa priest Duane Reece. "Just like a first communion, just like a baptism, all of these ways are ways humans use to communicate."

Both Arciaga and Roskins have previously called Animal Control to clean up the dead birds. The station reports that, after cleaning up the bird bodies, Animal Control notified Metro Police.

It is unclear what, if any, charges would be brought against the party responsible for disposing of the birds. But for business owners like Arciaga, the main concern is simply cleaning up the streets.

"I'm sorry for what we saw today," she told KLAS.