sudden

"A jet aircraft on a cloudless night began its landing flight at twenty miles due east from the airport where it was due to land. For the first five miles of its descent, the noise from the jet's engines disturbed no-one. At the sixth mile, an ornithologist, bird-watching on a reservoir, was irritated by the jet-noise just enough to give the aircraft a quick glance. He turned into a swan. At the seventh mile a naturalist and his wife saw the aircraft through net-curtains and were turned into crows. At the eighth mile four children in a school dormitory saw the aircraft through a skylight and turned into herons. At the ninth mile seven night-nurses in an old people's home saw the plane and turned into swallows. At the tenth mile twenty-one members of eight families saw the plane and turned into gulls. By the nineteenth mile twenty-four thousand, nine hundred and twenty-seven people in two towns, four villages and a camping-site had seen the plane. Most of them had turned into penguins. When the plane exploded on the air-strip, a cassowary with a purple beak stepped from the wreckage and checked himself into the VIP lounge."
The Cassowary by Tulse Luper
From The Falls by Peter Greenaway