April 15, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN RI
I'd heard that story too, and I thought about it just this week when one of my Chinese students talked about birds pecking through the family's bags of rice and eating the rice. this URL tells that the story is a myth - that the birds can digest the raw rice perfectly well - but people don't like the mess and don't want to slip on the hard little roller-bearing-like rice grains.
http://www.snopes.com/weddings/horrors/birdrice.htm
(I've had good luck Googling "urban legend" + whatever keyword, like "rice", is in the story under questions - chances are you'll find that many stories are really myths. Of course, even debunking myths can be mistaken - but I do think there's good reason to believe that birds can eat raw rice.)