Somedays you are the pigeon, ...

and some days you are the statue.

Back in the summer of aught seven, I wrote this about our visit to Chicago:

Around the corner from the Jazz Record Mart we encountered a flock of 50 or so pigeons on a sidewalk under an overpass. Nothing spectacular about that, except that until then I had not seen ANY other pigeons. None, nada. And that's when I thought it was weird. Used to be big cities were lousy with pigeons. They were everywhere. Now there are none except for this little outlaw band hiding under the overpass. What happened? Where did all the pigeons go?

I used Google, but did not find anything except I got the idea that Chicago had passed a law against feeding pigeons and then enforced it.

And then there was the story in The New Yorker about how "we" never agreed on what we were going to call the last decade. The author complained that aught was incorrect, but it's not. This got me thinking about the 30-06 rifle, as in thirty aught six. That's how I've always pronounced it, but just how do you spell it out? I was thinking it was "ought" six, but ought has another meaning: you should. But aught can mean all or nothing. So aught is how it is spelled. If you can tell the difference between the pronunciation of ought and aught, you are a better man than I.

Which reminds me that back in the day, when we wanted to imitate a grumpy old man, we would start off our tirade with "I remember back when I was a boy, back in aught nine ...".

So now you know what you aughter/ought to/otter do.

Marston sent me the picture.

Update January 2017 replaced missing picture.