“Regina v. Ojibway”

This is an appeal by the Crown by way of a stated case from a decision of the magistrate acquitting the accused of a charge under the Small Birds Act, R.S.O., 1960, c.724, s.2. The facts are not in dispute. Fred Ojibway, an Indian, was riding his pony through Queen’s Park on January 2, 1965. Being impoverished, and having been forced to pledge his saddle, he substituted a downy pillow in lieu of the said saddle. On this particular day the accused’s misfortune was further heightened by the circumstance of his pony breaking its foreleg. In accord with Indian custom, the accused then shot the pony to relieve it of its awkwardness. The accused was then charged with having breached the Small Birds Act, s.2 of which states:

2. Anyone maiming, injuring or killing small birds is guilty of an offence and subject to a fine not in excess of two hundred dollars.

The learned magistrate acquitted the accused holding, in fact, that he had killed his horse and not a small bird. With respect, I cannot agree.

In light of the definition section my course is quite clear. Section 1 defines “bird” as “a two-legged animal covered with feathers.” There can be no doubt that this case is covered by this section.

Counsel for the accused made several ingenious arguments to which, in fairness, I must address myself. He submitted that the evidence of the expert clearly concluded that the animal in question was a pony and not a bird, but this is not the issue. We are not interested in whether the animal in question is a bird or not in fact, but whether it is one in law. Statutory interpretation has forced many a horse to eat birdseed for the rest of its life.

Counsel also contended that the neighing noise emitted by the animal could not possibly be produced by a bird. With respect, the sounds emitted by an animal are irrelevant to its nature, for a bird is no less a bird because it is silent.

Counsel for the accused also argued that since there was evidence to show accused had ridden the animal, this pointed to the fact that it could not be a bird but was actually a pony. Obviously, this avoids the issue. The issue is not whether the animal was ridden or not, but whether it was shot or not, for to ride a pony or a bird is of no offence at all. I believe counsel now sees his mistake.

Counsel contends that the iron shoes found on the animal decisively disqualify it from being a bird. I must inform counsel, however, that how an animal dresses is of no consequence to this court.

Counsel relied on the decision in Re Chicadee, where he contends that in similar circumstances the accused was acquitted. However, this is a horse of a different colour. A close reading of that case indicates that the animal in question there was not a small bird, but, in fact, a midget of a much larger species. Therefore, that case is inapplicable to our facts.

Counsel finally submits that the word “small” in the title Small Birds Act refers not to “Birds” but to “Act”, making it The Small Act relating to Birds. With respect, counsel did not do his homework very well, for the Large Birds Act, R.S.O. 1960, c. 725 is just as small. If pressed, I need only refer to the Small Loans Act, R.S.O. 1960, c. 727, which is twice as large as the Large Birds Act.

It remains then to state my reason for judgment, which, simply, is as follows: Different things may take on the same meaning for different purposes. For the purpose of the Small Birds Act, all two-legged, feather-covered animals are birds. This, of course, does not imply that only two-legged animals qualify, for the legislative intent is to make two legs merely the minimum requirement. The statute therefore contemplated multi-legged animals with feathers as well. Counsel submits that having regard to the purpose of the statute only small animals “naturally covered” with feathers could have been contemplated. However, had this been the intention of the legislature, I am certain that the phrase “naturally covered” would have been expressly inserted just as “Long” was inserted in the Longshoreman’s Act.

Therefore, a horse with feathers on its back must be deemed for the purposes of this Act to be a bird, and a fortiori, a pony with feathers on its back is a small bird.

Counsel posed the following rhetorical question: If the pillow had been removed prior to the shooting, would the animal still be a bird? To this let me answer rhetorically: Is a bird any less of a bird without its feathers?

— Anonymous, collected in Amicus Humoriae, ed. Robert M. Jarvis, Thomas E. Baker, and Andrew J. McClurg, 2003

| Humor

Late Acceptance

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Verdi.jpg

In 1832, at age 19, Giuseppe Verdi applied to study at the Milan Conservatory and was rejected.

In 1898, at the end of his career, he learned that the conservatory had decided to rename itself the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatorium.

“My God, this was all that was lacking to plague the soul of a poor devil like me who desires only to be serene and to die serenely!” he wrote to his publisher. “No, sir! Even this isn’t allowed me! What wrong have I done that I should be tormented like this?”

That’s not quite fair. He had been four years over the age limit and a foreigner to the state of Lombardy-Venetia, where the school was located. But he remembered it as “a Conservatorium that (I do not exaggerate) tried to kill me, and whose memory I should try to escape.”

| Art

Frontier Justice

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TAOS_PLAZAca1907.jpg

In 1881 a federal trial judge in the Territory of New Mexico, presiding at Taos in an adobe stable used as a temporary courtroom, passed sentence on murderer José Gonzales. We don’t know the details of Gonzales’ crime, but it must have been extraordinary — here’s the sentence:

José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, in a few short weeks it will be spring. The snows of winter will flee away, the ice will vanish, and the air will become soft and balmy. In short, José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, the annual miracle of the years will awaken and come to pass, but you won’t be here.

The rivulet will run its purring course to the sea, the timid desert flowers will put forth their tender shoots, the glorious valleys of this imperial domain will blossom as the rose. Still, you won’t be here to see.

From every tree top some wild woods songster will carol his mating song, butterflies will sport in the sunshine, the busy bee will hum happy as it pursues its accustomed vocation, the gentle breeze will tease the tassels of the wild grasses, and all nature, José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, will be glad but you. You won’t be here to enjoy it because I command the sheriff or some other officer of the country to lead you out to some remote spot, swing you by the neck from a nodding bough of some sturdy oak, and let you hang until you are dead.

And then, José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, I further command that such officer or officers retire quickly from your dangling corpse, that vultures may descend from the heavens upon your filthy body until nothing shall remain but bare, bleached bones of a cold-blooded, copper-colored, blood-thirsty, throat-cutting, chili-eating, sheep-herding, murdering son of a bitch.

Cleopatra Mathis discovered the transcript in the records of the U.S. District Court, New Mexico Territory Sessions. She published it in Antaeus in autumn 1976.

| Crime · History · Society

Shortcut

Dashrath Manjhi

When his wife grew ill in the early 1960s, Indian farmhand Dashrath Manjhi took her from their home in Gelaur to the hospital in the neighboring town of Wazirganj. Unfortunately, this meant a journey of 19 kilometers, as a hillock of solid rock lay between the two villages.

When he returned to Gelaur, Manjhi resolved to improve matters. Working alone with a hammer and chisel, he spent 22 years cutting a passage through a solid mass of rock 360 feet long, 25 feet high, and 30 feet wide. When he finished in the 1980s, he had reduced the route from 19 kilometers to six and the travel time from six hours to one.

When Dasrath died in 2007, the Indian state of Bihar gave him a state funeral. He is remembered today in Gelaur as “the man who moved a mountain.”

See A for Effort.

(Thanks, Jebadiah.)

| Oddities

Defense Posture

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Pentagon_US_Department_of_Defense_building.jpg

You walk into Arlington, Virginia. As the Pentagon comes into view, you’ll be able to see either two or three sides of the building. Which is more likely?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

“Good Heavens, Holmes!”

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ghost-BlackDog.jpg

Stage instruction from La Tragedia de Baskerville, a five-act drama mounted in Bilbao in 1915 by Gonzalo Jóver and Enrique Arroyo:

El perro ha de ser de atrezzo, grande, negro, de cabeza achatada, en los ojos dos lámparas eléctricas rojas y otra en la boca, simulando la parte de la lengua. El perro irá montado sobre ballestas arquedas, con las patas extendidas en actitud de galopar. Las dos ballestas se unen por dos travesaños que irán debajo de las patas. Del travesaño delantero se engancha un alambre, del cual se tirará fuertemente, para que el perro corra con el movimiento propio del galope. Para que no se vea el montaje es necesario que los apliques sean más altos que el practicable del camino.

The dog, large and black, with red electric lights for eyes and another to indicate the tongue, is to be mounted on arched crossbows, with paws extended as though running. The crossbows are to be joined by two cross timbers, placed under the feet, and to the foremost cross piece a copper wire is to be attached in such fashion that it may be vigorously pulled, to give the animal a galloping movement. Arrangement of the mechanical mounting is to be such that the appliances are not visible from the audience.

Historian Paul Patrick Rogers notes that the play “seems never to have reached Madrid.”

| Literature

Forefather

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johntyler.jpg

John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, has two living grandchildren.

Tyler (1790-1862) was 63 when he fathered his seventh son, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, in 1853. And Lyon was in his 70s when he fathered two boys, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. in 1924 and Harrison Ruffin Tyler in 1928. (Harrison, now 84, owns Sherwood Forest, the Virginia plantation that his grandfather purchased in 1842.)

This makes Tyler the oldest U.S. president with living grandchildren. Second place belongs to James Garfield, who was 41 years younger than Tyler.

(Thanks, Arnold.)

| History

Fashion Victim

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1835-Wiener-Zeitschrift-fashion-plate.png

Effects of lightning on Mrs. T.T. Boddington, struck as her post-chariot departed Tenbury on April 13, 1832, as reported in the Lancet:

The … electric fluid … struck the umbrella she had in her hand; it was an old one made of cotton, and had lost the ferule that is usually placed at the end of the stick, so that there was no point to attract the spark. It was literally shivered to pieces, both the springs in the handle forced out, the wires that extended the whalebones broken, and the cotton covering rent into a thousand shreds. From the wires of the umbrella the fluid passed to the wire that was attached to the edge of her bonnet, the cotton thread that was twisted round that wire marking the place of entrance, over the left eye, by its being burnt off from that spot all round the right side, crossing the back of the head and down into the neck above the left shoulder. The hair that came in contact with it was also singed; it here made a hole through the handkerchief that was round the throat, and zigzagged along the skin of the neck to the steel busk of her stays, leaving a painful but not deep wound, and also affecting the hearing of the left ear. … There were marks of burning on the gown and petticoat above the steel; and the inside of the stays, and all the garments under the stays, were pierced by the passage of the fluid to her thighs, where it made wounds on both; but that on the left so deep, and so near the femoral artery, that the astonishment is, that she escaped with life;–even as it was, the hemorrhage was very great.

It also magnetized her corset:

http://books.google.com/books?id=fao-AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

“Both ends attract strongly the south pole of the needle, the upper part for some considerable way down; it then begins to lose power over the south pole, and the point of northern attraction is at about one third of the length of the busk from the bottom; so that by far the greatest portion of the whole has acquired southern attraction.”

| Science & Math