Environmentalists across the world mourned "Suzy," an endangered Piping Plover, as the entire US Air Force was grounded indefinitely for what Chief of Staff Jack Ripper called "An unprecedented Environmental Impact Standdown."

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the move while considering a lawsuit by an environmental group. The lawsuit charges that the Air Force should not be allowed to fly until it proves it can do so without harming wildlife, including birds and bugs. "We expect the suit to prevail," Judge Berkely J. Bong wrote in the landmark opinion. "After all, birds are people too."

The group that filed the suit has demanded that military airplanes be made flimsier so that they, rather than the birds, are damaged or destroyed by midairs. They have made "Suzy" their "poster bird" for fundraising and recruiting activist volunteers.

Suzy was last seen shading herself in the #2 intake of a B-1B Lancer at Mountain Home AFB, ID. Plovers' Pals, an Amherst, Massachusetts based lobbying group, which filed the suit, counts her as "missing, presumed dead."

"She never hurt anybody," Willie "Rainseed" Finkelstein of Plovers' Pals told Aero-News. "She just wanted to pipe. And plove, whatever that is. Instead, she got sucked into a jet pipe. It is a black day for the balance of nature. Those marauding Air Force creeps... what did they do that for? She never hurt anything!"

Airman First Class Esteban Torres of the 366th Expeditionary Air Wing, who tore down the jet's engine, disagreed vehemently. "Never hurt anything, my eye! Man, you should have seen the mess she made of the entire low-pressure section. You would never know there was so much, you know, stuff, in such a little bird."

FMI: www.ploverspals.org