{"id":3627,"date":"2020-11-30T17:17:10","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T22:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/?p=3627"},"modified":"2020-11-30T17:17:13","modified_gmt":"2020-11-30T22:17:13","slug":"for-the-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/?p=3627","title":{"rendered":"For the Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Although a number of pet birds have flown around my living room through the years, I tend to divide avian wildlife in New York City into two categories, as this sign does:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Why single out pigeons<\/em>? Here’s my theory: if you have one or two pigeons<\/em>, they’re beautiful — a feathered palette of grays and whites with touches of black. But that’s never what you actually have. You have a flock, a megaflock, many megaflocks! You have a pigeony exponential growth-curve akin to the one Covid-19 has, unfortunately, made us all too familiar with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pigeons also make an appearance in this sign, which a reader spotted in a park:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The reader remarked that she “would have thought NYC already had plenty of these without anyone having to breed more.” I join her in rejecting this imperative sentence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still another pigeon<\/em>, because, as I said, you really can’t have just one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You can read this sign two ways. (1) You’re not required <\/em>to feed a pigeon and clean-up<\/em>, but doing so would be nice. (2) You’re not supposed to feed <\/em>the pigeon<\/em>, but you’re going to do it anyway, so could you please remove the inevitable end product? It’s the law<\/em>. Which surprises me. I know there are all sorts of laws about snow removal — how much time may elapse after the last flake falls before you must shovel a path for pedestrians, for example. Is there also a time limit on poop? Do you have to sit around staring at the pigeon you’ve just (illegally) fed, so you can scoop the end product? Asking for a friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s it for pigeons<\/em>, you’ll be glad to know. But not for birds. <\/em>Below is one of the first signs I spotted when I started this blog: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Then, as now, I smiled to think of how you would sit <\/em>. . . birds<\/em>. Bend their little legs? Offer a chair? I’ll leave you with that image, hoping it cheers you, and any pigeons <\/em>you’ve befriended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although a number of pet birds have flown around my living room through the years, I tend to divide avian wildlife in New York City into two categories, as this sign does: Why single out pigeons? Here’s my theory: if you have one or two pigeons, they’re beautiful — a feathered palette of grays and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,9,1],"tags":[591,16,590,411,367,48],"class_list":["post-3627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar","category-street-signs-and-advertisements","category-uncategorized","tag-birds","tag-english-usage","tag-imperative-sentences","tag-nyc-signs","tag-pigeons","tag-silly-signs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4YRMV-Wv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3627"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3639,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627\/revisions\/3639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarianinthecity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}